


The Gilded Cage

by Robin Hill (Mythichistorian)



Category: Doctor Who, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Daleks - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-04 07:31:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13359477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythichistorian/pseuds/Robin%20Hill
Summary: While investigating the disappearance of a number of probes, the Enterprise encounters a rogue planet - and discovers a deadly secret lying hidden beneath its scarred and radioactive surface.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally published as a fanzine by ‘Empathy’ back in July 1981. All rights reserved to the authors and publishers. Anyone wishing to reprint any material in whole or part must obtain permission before doing so.  
> No attempt is made to supersede any rights held by Paramount Pictures, NBC, BBC, or any other holder of rights on STAR TREK, or DR WHO.

A Dextra class deep-space pre-contact probe is three point one four metres long, one point six metres in diameter and weighs two hundred twenty six kilos. Dextra one zero zero five, launched eight stellar months before by the Federation Starship the USS ‘Lexington’ was coasting, under its own inertia, towards the third upper rim of the inconspicuous group of stars that is the known galaxy when it happened. Eight micro seconds before all signals from the probe ceased, the port solar flare cluster registered a sudden rise in free atomic material, and correctly identified it as nitrogen molecules. It was the last information that any Starfleet pickup station received.

Two days later Dextra one zero seven zero’s spectroscanners located a planetary body as yet undiscovered by any other probe. A routine sighting, it catalogued the encounter in its memory banks to be fired back to the nearest pickup in a five millisecond burst of data. It was never to send that information. In a flare of plasma it was reduced to its component atoms, to become nothing more than a rapidly dispersing cloud of radioactive gas.

The dark red planet below glided innocently past, following a path through space normally only shared by interstellar dust and free hydrogen.

* * *

A class one Cruiser of the United Federation of Planets is two hundred eighty eight point six five metres long, one hundred twenty seven point one zero metres wide, and has an effective warp mass of one hundred ninety three thousand, fourty eight point nine three metric tonnes.

James T. Kirk, captain of the Starship USS ‘Enterprise’, was frowning at the class one security hardcopy printout of a subspace message. Not that such a message was the cause of his worry – he had been on the receiving end of enough of them in his time. It was the particularly unnerving content of the message that was the cause of his concern. He thumbed the erase switch on the visualiser plate he was holding and handed it to the yeoman standing beside him. He sat back, thought still wrinkling his brow.

“Take over, Mr Scott. I’ll be in the rec. room if I’m needed.” He stood, letting a red-shirted figure slip into his command chair. He took a last glance at the viewing screens encircling the bridge and walked towards the wall behind his chair. Two red panels obediently hissed apart, and he stepped into the turbolift.

He was still frowning when the doors slid open a few floors deeper into his ship. As he neared the rec room he could hear the sound of voices raised in argument. His frown dissolved as he recognised them, until as he reached the door it was replaced with an amused smile. The voice, for with him nearing the argument the face that it was only one raised voice became evident, was in the middle of a particularly vehement speech aimed at a dignified figure seated before a three dimensional chess set.

“… will you get it into that thick skull of yours that no collection of inanimate components, no matter how complicated, is capable of original thought.” The voice’s owner was standing at the other end of the table, both hands, the knuckles whitening under the pressure of the grip, were clenched across the top of a chair. The ship’s medical officer, Doctor Leonard McCoy was in fine voice. The object of his tirade moved a white queen from level two to level three, then turned to face him.

“There are several confirmed reports of intelligent civilisations consisting entirely of cybernetic and robotic mechanisms …”

“Intelligent? That hasn’t been proved, Spock, and you know it. They’ve all followed existing programming. No-one has proved that they were in control of their own destinies.”

“May I remind you, Doctor, that no-one has disproved that theory either.”

“But nobody has ever given irrefutable proof that a robot civilisation …” He was suddenly conscious of Kirk standing behind him. “Jim, you talk to him.”

“Sorry, Bones. I don’t try and get involved in theological arguments.” He stepped over to the food dispenser, selected a tape cassette and plugged it into a slot on the wall. There was a mechanical chuckling noise and a yellow panel hissed open, revealing a plastic beaker of steaming brown liquid. He took a sip, nodded approvingly, and joined the argument at the table.

McCoy was frowning again. Spock wore his neutrally impassive – and the McCoy infinitely maddening – expression, contemplating the next ten or so moves on the chess set. Kirk spoke, addressing both of them. “I trust this obviously stimulating conversation hasn’t kept you from the problem at hand?”

Spock shifted the queen again. “On the contrary. I have been devoting a considerable percentage of my consideration to the matter. I have not, as yet, arrived at a satisfactory explanation of the reported events.

Mc Coy scowled at him, then turned to Kirk. “No more news, Jim?”

“No, Bones. Nothing since the last course change order. We’re still a couple of parsecs out from the last reported sighting discontinuity.”

“We haven’t heard your thoughts on the matter yet.”

He placed the drained cup on the table. “Right! What do we have so far? Five robot probes suddenly ceased transmission within two and half parsecs of each other in the space of a few days. In two cases an unregistered class L planet had just been sighted. And that is all. Starfleet wants the nearest cruiser – us – to investigate, and here we are. Now, any further comments?”

Spock frowned, touched a knight, thought better of it and moved a pawn. “We assume that the loss of all five probes under such similar sequences of events precludes the simple random repetition of occurrences …”

“That is, it’s too much of a coincidence.”

“Precisely. The Dextra class of probes was designed with an inordinately high component success factor, due to its stringent performance requirements.”

“So you are ruling out simple mechanical or electronic failure.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“So what are we left with?”

“Two distinct theories.”

“Which are?”

“Some natural phenomenon, such as an ion storm, material concentration or a yet unclassified interstellar object.”

“Or?”

Spock cleared his throat. “Deliberate intervention by a sapient lifeform in possession of highly sophisticated levels of technology.”

McCoy broke in. “What about sabotage within the Federation?”

“I don’t think so, Bones. The probes are assembled and factory sealed before being delivered to the starships that launch them, and nobody knows where they’re intended to be sent. And all five probes were launched by different ships, so whoever wants them sabotaged would have to have someone on each ship. And no other probes have gone haywire over the last few months.“ He looked at Spock again, waiting for any further comment. When none was forthcoming, he continued. “Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t beneficial to Federation spaceprobes, and there’s a good chance it will have the same effect on manned ships, and maybe even manned planets. There haven’t been enough sightings to make an estimate as to how fast the effect is travelling, if at all. But …” He let the phrase hang in the air.

McCoy nodded, shot a glance at the Enterprise’s first officer and straightened from over the back of the chair. “Well, if there’s nothing else to discuss, I’ve got patients to attend …”

The electronic bosun’s pipe wailed from a wall speaker. Uhura’s voice sliced the air of the rec room. “Captain Kirk to the bridge.”

Kirk was on his feet and halfway to the communicator panel before she had finished. He thumbed a pulsing illuminated switch and spoke at the rectangular grill next to it. “Kirk here. What is it Lieutenant?”

“Extreme sensor contact, sir. Big. It registers at least class K, maybe L.”

“We’ll be right up. Sound yellow alert. Kirk out.” The lamp winked out. He turned to Spock. “I’ll need you on the library computer, Spock. It could be nothing more than a stray asteroid, but this close to the spot where those probes vanished we can’t take any chances.” Spock nodded, and followed him out to the turbo-lift. The floor sensed their approach, and a chamber was waiting for them as they reached the doors. Scant seconds later Kirk stepped out onto the deck that was the consciousness of the organism that was the Enterprise, the most powerful single ship within a hundred parsecs. Long ago had he ceased to be amazed by the contemplation of such a concept, that he was sole commander of a vessel capable of reducing whole planetary systems to little more than gaseous pools of material in the vacuum of space. But the Enterprise and her sister ships were not merely brutal but sophisticated tools of destruction. As the laser can cut through case hardened alloy, and yet perform the most intricate of surgical operations, the Starship was a most efficient tool of peace throughout the Federation, maintaining the tenuous communication links between the civilisations involved.

He stepped down onto the plinth supporting the command chair. Montgomery Scott, the ship’s chief engineer, vacated the chair and motioned towards the main viewscreen in front of them. A schematic of the star systems in front of the ship filled the screen, different colours showing relative distances and magnitudes. Kirk settled into the command chair as Scotty spoke.

“Yon beastie’s a rogue, Captain. No local star for it to orbit.”

“Thank you, Mr Scott. Spock, any more information?”

“Correlating now, Captain. Class L, sixty two percent Earth Standard gravity at mean land altitude. Atmosphere, primarily nitrogen plus a few trace elements. Incapable of supporting human life. Humidity …” A pause, a frown spreading across Spock’s face. “Humidity zero percent, or too low to register on these instruments. Also no discernible magnetic field, but high radiation levels. Background count in excess of twenty four rads …”

“Rads?” Kirk was surprised. Normal radiation levels were measured in tenths of millirads. Whatever that ball of rock was, it was intensely radioactive.

“Correct.”

“Planet wide?”

“The reading is average for the entire planet. Troughs to twenty rads, peaking in localities to thirty five decimal two nine.” Spock rose from the viewing shroud over the library computer display screen. “The planet is little more than a cinder. No life forms. No free water. No sentient energy generation.”

“A dead planet?”

“In that it cannot support even the most basic of known organic life forms, yes.”

Kirk leaned forward, right arm resting on the arm of his command chair, as if getting closer to the image on the main viewing screen would give him some insight into the problem.

“Any ideas as to the cause of the radiation? Surely the atmosphere shields any cosmic hard radiation?”

“That is correct, Captain. Residual particle concentrations indicate, however, that the radiation was generated artificially …”

Kirk’s left eyebrow climbed up his forehead. “Artificially? A bomb, or series of bombs?”

Spock considered for a moment before continuing. “Yes. A thermoneuclear weapon would give somewhat the same phenomena. Also, the overload of certain types of nuclear power generating plant. The explosions would have to be planet-wide to ensure such saturation levels, but such a premise is possible.”

McCoy, silent until now, broke in. “Planet wide? Like a global war?”

“It would be most unlikely that a single detonation would be responsible for such results. The crater resultant of such an explosion would still be quite evident, had it not split the planet apart at the moment of detonation.”

“And it all happened long enough ago to have all the evidence wiped out by erosion.” Spock nodded. Kirk paused, chewing his lip thoughtfully. Finally he made up his mind. “Deflector screens to full, Mr Scott. Give us high orbit, Mr Sulu. Take Spock’s gravitational readings. It should stay fairly constant, but a thing that radioactive could still be unstable. Sensor probes, Mr Spock. If it was a nuclear explosion it may have been artificial. If it was, I want to know if there’s still any trace of it.”

“Alert phaser bank, Captain?”

“We are on yellow alert, Mr Chekov. Or hadn’t you noticed it?”

“Uh! Yes sir, but I thought …”

“All right. As you were. I’m getting the same spooky feeling myself.” He concentrated on the image before him as the great white ship slid easily into a high elliptical orbit. Satisfied nothing untoward was going to happen he leaned back in his chair, half turning to the library computer to his right. Before he could speak, Spock was providing information.

“Confirm class ‘L’ planet. The high radiation levels preclude all but the most inaccurate scans, but the internal structure reads stable.” He frowned, then touched a control, peering intently into the display shroud. He straightened, stiff backed. “Most unusual …”

“Spock?”

“A moment, please Captain.” More fine adjustments on the controls. Even McCoy was intensely interested. It was unusual for Spock to be puzzled by an apparently normal phenomenon. “Difficult to isolate, Captain. But I believe there are structures on the surface that are not the result of natural occurrences …”

“Artificial? Produced by thinking creatures?”

Spock lifted his head from the shroud and turned to face him. “Yes, Captain. That is a distinct possibility. But there are unusual interference patterns affecting the sensor probes.”

“Explain.”

“Whenever I read a possible contact a local increase in radiation …”

The viewing screen suddenly flickered, and a jolt pulsed through the gravity plates in the floor. Sulu’s hands flickered across his console, and Chekov leaned over the navigation deck between them. Spock clutched at the edge of his instrument panel, jabbed a couple of switches and, with the unemotional voice of a man reading out a rec. room menu, continued:

“Tractor beam. Magnetic. I register extremely high gauss reading, fluctuating with random frequencies.”

“Red alert, Mr Sulu. Damage control reports. Prepare to break orbit. Can the screens take it, Mr Scott?”

“Aye, Captain. If we don’t have to deal with much more.” He made a rapid survey of his status boards. “Good job we’re bigger than one of those probes. This change in field would have pulled us apart for sure if we were.”

“So now we know what happened to the probes. Anything on communications, Lieutenant?”

Uhura paused, listening for a moment. Then she wrenched the silver earpiece pickup from her right ear and dropped it as if it were white hot to the panel before her.

“Wow! Nothing for a moment, then everything. All frequencies – static mainly, plus pure tones and harmonics.”

“Subspace too?” She touched a control, retrieved the earpiece and listened again.

“Yes. Captain, I don’t understand it …”

“Yes. You shouldn’t get interference in subspace. Not in this quadrant, anyway. No black holes.”

“McCoy turned from the image on the viewscreen to face Kirk. “Do you mean to say ...?”

“Right. Whatever this interference is, it’s no natural. And that tractor beam certainly isn’t. Any idea where it’s originating, Spock?”

“Working on that now, Captain. It appears to centre around a surface feature I had difficulty in identifying on an earlier sweep …”  
“Any co-ordinates to work on?”

“Within a half kilometre of the phenomenal centre, Captain.”

“Still no contact, Lieutenant?”

“None, Captain.” The floor bucked again. Not that the ship was being pulled about – they wouldn’t feel much if it was. Something was interfering with the critical force field balance both inside and around the ship, the computer controlled stabilising circuitry being unable to accommodate the constantly changing field flux. Not much could do that, theoretically. It had to either be a computer failure – virtually impossible, with the sophisticated systems employed on the ship – or a massive energy field near it. One of at least photon torpedo close proximity detonation magnitude.

In this case it was an intensely fluctuating magnetic field. Beyond the skin of the ship, at the interface between space and the force fields, a pyrotechnic display to rival a supernova was occurring as stray atoms of gas were annihilated in the whirling magnetic vortices – not only did the ‘Enterprise’ look like a glorified wedding cake, she was neon lit to boot.

Kirk couldn’t see this display, nor would he have appreciated its beauty. Instead he decided it was time to do something positive. They were unharmed at the moment, but he wasn’t prepared to wait to see if the situation would be redressed.

“Give the main photon torpedo banks that building’s co-ordinates, Mr Spock. Let’s see what they make of a torpedo.”

Several decks below, and forward of their position in the ship, a battle computer powered up. A pellet of anti-matter was reconstructed on a torpedo ‘tube’ – more a sphere than anything – and the energising coils warmed to combat status.

“One torpedo. Fire when your tube comes to bear.” Kirk closed the intercom and turned to observe the attack on the main screen. Over a muted speaker above his head came the fatally calm voice of weapons control counting down the last few seconds to firing. The floor lurched, then the vibrations stopped.

“Captain. The magnetic field has cut out. We’re drifting free.” Chekov leaned back in his chair, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Belay the torpedo firing. All weapons systems to yellow standby. We are still on red alert!” He turned to Spock, a frown creasing his forehead. “Now what was that all about?” The corners of Spock’s mouth curved downward.

“I am somewhat at a loss to explain these phenomena.”  
“Think whoever’s down there knew we were going to fire a torpedo?”

Spock shook his head. “Doubtful, Captain. Our forcefields preclude any passive detectors investigating the operation of the systems of this ship, and I would have detected any active probing fields.”

Kirk considered this, then: “Orbital status, Mr Sulu?”

“Steady at one hundred twelve point nine, two kilometres to mean planet altitude. Circular orbit with the galactic plane. The planet isn’t turning relative to anything to give us any poles.”

“Very well. Back to yellow alert, Mr Sulu. Mr Scott. Take over. It’s time we had a little conference on this planet. Warp out the moment anything that looks like we can’t handle begins to show.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Mr Spock, Lt. Uhura. Bring all the tape you have on the planet to the briefing room. Doctor McCoy, I’ll want all the information you have on life support on high radiation planetary bodies.”

“Will do, Jim. You’re not suggesting we send down a landing party? To that?”

“I don’t know yet. But if we have to, I’ll want to be prepared.”

They reconvened in the briefing room. Besides Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura, they were joined by Christine Chapel and Lt. Karl Hansa, the ships senior radiation expert. One of Scotty’s engineering team members, he wore the red shirt and spiralling badge of that section. The same age and seniority as Sulu, he had a perpetually eager expression on his face, his dark eyes ever alive, missing nothing. After acquainting them all with the events leading up to the discovery of the planet, Kirk handed the floor over to Spock to give a summary of the discoveries they had made over the past hour or so. He came to the end of his speech:

“… that there is every indication that some form of intelligence exists, or did exist, on the surface of the planet below us.”

Kirk wasn’t quite expecting that. “Did exist?”

“Yes Captain. It is possible that a sophisticated automatic system is in operation.”

“You meant that whoever set up the systems in the first place could have been destroyed by the holocaust, and all that’s happening is a defense system operating under the commands of some automatic device?”

“That is a possibility.”

“Any possibility of anything else?”

“The initial attack was most potent, however our surviving it would indicate that backup systems would be needed.”

“Which raises the question of why nothing else happened.” He rested his forearms on the table and toyed with a tape cassette. “We need more information.”

“A landing party?”

Kirk glanced at McCoy. “Yes. It’s beginning to look like we’ll need one. There’s something down there, and we’ll need more information before we can risk leaving it to its own devices.”

“The radiation levels …”

“Captain, the environment hard radiation suits will provide the necessary safe shielding for approximately ninety four point two seven hours exposure to the maximum dosage observed.”

“That answer your question, Bones?”

McCoy scowled. “Yes. It’ll have to. But what about the transporter ..?”

“If I could answer that?”

“Lt. Hansa?”

“We’d have some trouble with the transporters. The radiation is ionising the gasses in the atmosphere – it’s acting like a force field or an ion storm. That’s what’s interfering with Mr Spock’s instruments.”

“And what would you suggest?”

“Use the shuttlecraft to transport down. It would also act as a radiation refuge while the landing party was down there.”

“Any comments, Spock?”

“The use of the shuttlecraft would be safer on several counts – both intrinsically as a mode of transport, and to provide some form of protective base of operations.”

“Good. It’s decided then.” He pressed a switch on the intercome panel. “Kirk to shuttlecraft bay. Prepare a craft for immediate launch. Kirk out.” He faced Spock. “Any suggestions for the landing team?”

“Myself, Mr Hansa, Mr Scott, Doctor McCoy.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, Captain. I believe I have included an adequate cross section of personnel we may need to encounter any conditions …”

“You mean I’m not needed on such a trip?”

Spock frowned. “I …”

“You’ve no objections to my inclusion on the party?”

“No, Captain. However …”

“Then it’s settled. I’m just as intrigued by things as you are, Spock. There’s no reason why you should hog all the fun.”

Spock stared at Kirk. “I assure you, Captain, I …”

“R.H.I.P, Spock. Rank Hath Its Privilege.”

Spock nodded sagely. “Ah” I see. Human trait. Most …” He noticed Kirk and McCoy smiling at him, thought better of completing the voiced thought, and settled for a devastatingly neutral stare.

* * *

The following hour found Spock, Kirk, and McCoy in the bulky E.V.A suits standing at the entrance of the shuttlecraft Magellan, which, in turn, rested on the large circular elevator/rotator plate in the ‘Enterprise’s’ shuttle bay. Already aboard, Hansa was powering up the little impulse drives of the twenty-four foot long ship. Almost at the last moment, Uhura had been included in the team when the computers came up with the interesting fact that the carrier signals of the jumble of static being pulsed over the audio systems of the communications deck were in fact repeating signals, much modified by the hard blanket of radiation in the atmosphere of the planet.

The access door slid smoothly closed behind them as Kirk slipped into the pilot’s seat just vacated by Hansa. Flying the shuttle was one chore he enjoyed, giving him at least a feeling of controlling something the size his human perception could cope with. Something a ship the size of the Enterprise could never do. A row of red telltales pulsed on, showing the pressure of the bay had dropped to zero, and through the thick plexiglass screens above him he could see the multifaceted bay doors slide apart, nudged by powerful motors in the floor below. Beyond could be seen the gently wavering starfield, caused by the miniscule changes in the refractive index of the forcefield currently enveloping the ship. A warning tone sounded and everything in the shuttle seemed the change weight for a fraction of a second, caused by the bay’s gravity motors cutting out and the shuttle’s artificial gravity taking over. The shuttle began to drift slowly from the deck, the weight taken from the landing legs causing them to extend slightly on their shock absorbers and push the ship gently upwards.

Kirk applied a few kilos of forward thrust, and the little ship began to laze forward. They were in full suits, with the visors closed and breathing air from the compact life support systems in packs high on their backs.

* * *

Space is supposed to be a truly silent place. But life in a suit or ship is never silent. Kirk could hear the hiss of static in his intercom, the gurgle of liquid gas and coolant conducted through his suit, chair and frame of the ship, the slightly asthmatic breathing of his suit conditioner and the powerful hum from the impulse motors in the pods running the length of the ship. The brilliantly lit interior of the bay gave way to the intense blackness of space, dotted here and there with flaring points of light, pulsing in the haze of the forcefield. To their right, as yet unseen but on the small monitors in the grey globes suspended in front of them on articulated arms sprouting from the walls of the cabin, the brilliant red orb of the planet their mothership serenely orbited once every hundred and fifty or so minutes.

There was a rainbow flaring, accompanied by a slight lurch, as the shuttle forcefield contacted the ship’s field, the computer synchronising the two to enable the shuttle to penetrate it without damage. The starfield snapped into hard focus, the closeness of the shuttle’s field doing little to interfere with the light from it. Above them, left and right hung the Enterprise’s massive warp drive engine pods.

Kirk leaned the shuttle to starboard, pulling the craft away from the bulk of the mother ship. He punched an automatic deceleration command into the nav. Comp. then sat back to let the circuitry fly them into a precise landing approach, entering the atmosphere like a fireball. The shuttle nosed round, turning into the descent. Moments later the collision plates closed over the nose windows and the heatshields beneath them started to warm up.

Despite the sophisticated gravity balance circuitry, the interior of the craft was subject to fairly violent shaking, and Kirk was not alone in being thankful for the shock straps on the couches.

The shuttle peeled itself from the re-entry hellfire and performed a lazy sweep across the wind torn surface of the planet. The collision screens still sealed, the landing party had to rely on the camera images to pick a place to land. Kirk handed over the search procedure to Spock, mainly because he was the one responsible for the choice of landing point. A pair of crosshairs appeared on Kirk’s viewing screen and Spock relinquished control of the shuttle to him.

“The projected source of the force field lies in the approximate region of the rise in the ground beyond this area of discolouration in front of us.” Spock flicked a row of switches, and turned to peer into his screen. Kirk concentrated on the grey splash on the red desert below them. He eased the shuttle in a gentle spiral, feeling through the feedback in the control horns the atmosphere buffeting the slab sides of the shuttle. As he dropped closer to the ground he saw the spiky volcanic cores, stripped of the softer earth by centuries of wind-blown sand, cracks and ridges in the ground worn smooth over the aeons, not unlike the surface of Earth’s moon – but in this case painted all the shades of red by some maniacal artist.

The shuttle dipped over the wide desert plain, slicing through great clouds of red dust. Kirk was steering the ship by the sensor plot on his monitor screen, the view from the craft by the naked eye having deteriorated dramatically over the past few minutes. The grey blob on the valley floor loomed larger in the screen, and the monolithic block of stone beyond grew behind it. Kirk was more concerned with the slabs of granite whipping past beneath the hull. Shuttlecraft were pretty phenomenal little beasts, but there were limits to their performance, and landing on needles of rock was not included in their repertoires.

“We’ll do a full sensor sweep first, then make a landing past this grey area of ground.”

“Affirmative, Captain. Sensor package running.”

The shuttle leaned to starboard, cutting a graceful curve through the dust. The all seeing eyes of the sensor assembly under her nose probed the ground in a wide sweep, the computers filing and sorting all the information they received, passing an occasional interesting fact to Spock’s monitor. Kirk concentrated on the ground, and was mildly surprised, and pleased, to note that the dust storms reluctantly subsided as they passed over the limit of the grey patch. He thumbed a control and the collision panels sank into the front panel, filling the craft with red tainted starlight. “I think we’ll …”

* * *

Kirk never finished the sentence. The windows filled with whirling blue-green lights, and the shuttle bucked like a cork in a hurricane. There was an ominous groaning noise from somewhere behind them and the windows filled alternatively with horizon, desert floor, grey mass, horizon, starfield, and horizon again. A funnel of blue flame connected the tossing craft with the side of the vaguely pyramid-shaped block beyond the grey area. Kirk fought with the controls – not against the force feedback of attitude yoke, as ever it was wonderfully light and responsive – but to keep the craft under some semblance of controlled flight. The blue beam pushed the shuttle wildly towards the ground, then, when impact seemed inevitable, cut out. Kirk threw every trick he knew into the controls, and then some, and with impulse drive screaming in protest, hauled the nose up and round. A level patch of ground swum into view and he flung the craft towards it, hoping that his own instinct would put the ship down in one piece.

The landing skids popped out automatically as the approach altimeter sensed they were close to the ground. The red plain screamed up at them as the shuttle wallowed in its own slipstream, spilling air from the broad belly plate as it teetered on the verge of a stall. It flared out, dropping like a stone to the unyielding ground. Kirk pushed the throttle controls to full and held down the circuit breaker override, ignoring the plaintive wail of the warning alarm. The nose began to lift as the craft picked up forward momentum. The tail-skid caught, dragging the nose down. Kirk cancelled the throttle demand switch, locked the controls and hoped.

The belly dropped, lunged skywards, then hammered down. A plume of red obscured the windscreens, and the cabin shook as if it were caught in an earthquake. There was a stomach heaving wrench, then all was calm.

The interior lights flickered back on, and Kirk, ears singing, took a rapid check on the systems of the ship. A reassuring green glow from the pressure shell integrity told him that at least they hadn’t sprung a leak. He started the repressurisation sequence, and started to unlock the seals of his helmet. Spock was making a minute examination of the image on his monitor screen, and a rattle behind him told him someone was already moving from the passenger seats. Another row of green lights joined their brothers on the ships systems board and he shrugged off the helmet, taking a deep breath of the cool, tasteless air.

He slipped the shock straps and clambered out of the couch, mildly surprised at how level the decking was. McCoy, seeing he was free of his helmet, unshipped his, obviously pleased at the opportunity to do so.

“Everybody all right? No casualties?”

“All fine, Jim. It certainly looks like a better landing than the last time I was in a shuttle.” Kirk gave a mental grimace, remembering the crash on the planet that ended up with them appearing in a kind of bizarre arena. At least McCoy had got out of this one without a dozen or so centimetres of steel rod in his side.

“The shuttle appears to have suffered only superficial damage. However, that is of secondary concern. I thought that our original sensor probe had confirmed that this was a dead planet. But …” Spock turned from the viewscreen. “Captain, may I have your opinion on this?”

Kirk stepped forward, dropping his helmet into the seat he had just vacated. He leaned over Spock’s shoulder to look into the monitor screen.

Through the last settling clouds of sand the craft had thrown into the air on its landing he could see the edge of the grey area they had flown over just before landing.

Quite distinctly in the withering cloud of radiation, he saw the straight, parallel sided flanks of very Earth like trees, still hung with leaves.

And in a small clearing a few metres inside the treeline was a patch of brilliantly coloured flowers.


	2. Chapter 2

Kirk mentally shrugged off the cloying mantle of surprise, and turned his attention to the controls below the screen. He started jabbing jewelled studs and noted the changing patterns offered by the flickering event boards.

“The monitors check out, Spock?”

“Affirmative, Captain. All systems appear to be functioning normally.”

“Any chance of hallucination?”

“That is a possibility, however it is a very thorough attempt. All the sensor reading indicate that what we see in the monitor is actually there.”

“Lt. Hansa. Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

Hansa, his movements hampered in the confines of the shuttle y his bulky suit, edged forward to look into the monitor.

“Hmm. Most interesting. Any structure or composition readings?”

Spock leaned back in his seat. “Radiation inhibits accurate scan, but spectrometry indicated high density of carbon structures, plus silicates and phosphates. All appear to be compounded with oxygen in some form or other …”

“Oxides? You mean all the free oxygen has been reacted with other elements?”

“Yes, Captain. That would account for the absence of breathable oxygen in the atmosphere.”

“Yes,” continued Hansa. “I’ve seen it happen in nuclear test sites. The intense heat generated by the flame front of the explosion bakes everything. The oxygen burns out in the fireball, the rest turns instantaneously to white hot ash.”

“You mean those trees out there are dead?”

“Very. Petrified in fact.” He pointed at a display from one of the sensors. “Look at the spectrograph. Calcium, Silicon, Carbon, and Oxygen. Carbonates, silicates. Rock and sand and glass. That forest is as hard as if it were carved from solid granite.”

“And the flowers?”

Hansa frowned. “That I’m not sure of. Could be something in their chemistry when they were alive. The heat fused them instead of burning. Like glass.”

“Spock? Any further comments?”

“None, Captain. It merely serves to confirm theories propounded earlier – that some time ago this planet experienced a massive nuclear holocaust.”

Kirk nodded, his face hooded with thought. “Any contact with the Enterprise?”

Uhura lifted her head from a bank of instruments beside her seat. “Static too great. I can’t punch through it. And we appear to be shielded by the forest out there.” She paused for a moment. “At least, I think so.”

Kirk was reaching for his helmet. He paused. “You think so?”

She pulled a wry face. “Well, I know this may sound silly ..?”

“Try us, Lieutenant.”

“Well, whenever I find a clear tunnel the static closes it again. It could be just normal variation in white scatter, but if I stay on one band it stays blocked.”

“You mean someone’s deliberately trying to block the signals?”

“If they are it’s the most efficient job I’ve ever seen. I can’t even hold a plot long enough to make any direction on the interference. It seems to be all around us.”

“You still think it’s deliberate jamming?”

“That’s the point, Captain. I don’t know. I can usually spot if it’s deliberate, but this is so … so subtle. I just can’t tell if it’s artificial or not.”

Kirk clipped on his helmet and opened the visor. “Hard hats on. Spock, open the collision panels.”

The cabin lights dimmed as the ribbed window slid into the front plate. The eerie red landscape appeared dimly through the gloom of starlight, the dust thrown up by the shuttle’s arrival still swirling in ghostly clouds around them. The sky directly above them was a deep Prussian blue, the star cover shimmering slightly in the thin but dust laden atmosphere. The sky reddened as it reached the horizon. To their left stretched the irregular line of the edge of the grey forest, its weird grey trees vanishing in the distance like a spectral picket fence. An occasional, but spectacular, aurora Borealis pulsed through the sky over the strange triangular hill directly in front of them.

Kirk was suddenly struck by the unreal beauty of it all. The strange purple desert and the stone forest. He was aware of the others’ fascination. Hansa was staring open mouthed at the panorama. Uhura had stepped forward to share the view and McCoy was squinting at the hill. Only Spock was apparently unaffected. His mechanically calm voice jerked Kirk back to reality.

“Ship integrity stable. All mechanical and electronic systems check out as within tolerable limits.”

“Uh. Yes, Spock. Prepare for an EVA. We’ll take a look outside. Lt. Hansa?”

“What ..?”

“Lt. Hansa.”

“Sorry, Captain. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

“No, Lieutenant. We’ll be going EVA. Anything special you’ll need?”

“Um, soil samples. Away from the shuttle so there’s no chance of contamination from our exhausts. And some of those trees and plants. Oh, and I’ll put down a Solar Wind pack. Should pick up some interesting fallout.”

“Very well. Commence decompression, Mr Spock.”

Beneath the floor powerful little pumps started to scavenge the contents of the shuttle. Kirk felt his suit inflate as the pressure dropped on its outer side and there was an oppressive feeling of being alone as with the air all airborne sounds gradually vanished. As he looked out of the viewing ports there was only the rasp of his own breathing and the gentle hiss of static from his communicator channel to remind him he was still alive. There was a thud, and a faint hiss, rising in pitch as the shuttle repressurised with the atmosphere of the planet outside. He turned back to the interior as Hansa cracked the access hatch. The ramp under the door slid silently to the red ash-like sand below and he stepped through the hatch.

As he stepped off the ramp he automatically reached for his hand phaser, corrected himself, and and let his hand rest lightly at his side. Silly. The place had been dead for centuries – at least it looked like it. He glanced round, marvelling at the calm of it all and picturing the arrival of the shuttle minutes before.

He nodded inside his helmet and turned to face Spock, crouching in the open hatchway, a thoughtful expression on his face, the handle of his phaser cradled in his right hand. Kirk found it comforting to realise that even the implacable Spock was feeling edgy.

“Hansa, Spock, McCoy. Come on out. Lt. Uhura, keep trying to contact the ship. And let me know the moment you pick up any surface generated signals like those we picked up earlier. Hansa, check the forest and get any soil samples you need. Spock, McCoy, we’ll check out this mysterious hill of Spock’s. Usual drill, checks every fifteen minutes. Report back at the shuttle in,” he checked the timer on the front of his chest pack. “Two hours. Lieutenant Uhura, keep tabs on our transmission. If we seem to be getting overloaded by static let me know. And any radiation increase and we all head back to the shuttle. Any questions?”

None were forthcoming. After years of experiencing Kirk’s methods of conducting a landing party all those involved knew what to expect. He continued: “Good. Keep your eyes open. This place has more to it than meets the eye. All right, let’s move out.”

Spock padded lightly down the ramp, followed by Hansa carrying a steel coloured box the size of a small suitcase. McCoy, his medical tricorder held defensively in front of him, joined Kirk, who had turned to examine the reddish-brown dust beneath their feet.

“Radiation high, but tolerable, Jim. Pretty much as indicated by the sensors.” Kirk sensed the unease in his voice.

“Something wrong, Bones?”

“I don’t know. I keep getting this funny feeling I’m being watched.” Kirk saw him shake his head inside his helmet. “Silly. I’m letting the place get at me.”

“Same here, Bones. I’ve seen some weird sights before but this beats them all. Look at that …”

‘That’ was a giant phosphorescent halo shimmering across the treeline. The whole sky appeared to be alight now. Spock appeared by their sides.

“Electrostatic discharge. The radiation is striking a charge onto the metallic deposits in the fossilised structures. The charge collects around points of smallest radius and is arcing into the atmosphere through the dust clouds.”

“Trust you to shatter our illusions, Spock. I thought it was rather beautiful.” He paused. “And a little eerie.”

“The need to resort to the supernatural in the explanation of simple scientific phenomena is a human trait I find difficult to reconcile. However, it does have a fascination of its own.”

“Careful, Spock. I almost detect a hint of sentiment there.”

Spock turned towards the rise in ground in the distance, aiming the sensor array of his tricorder at the strange pyramid. “Insults, Doctor, no matter how subtle, have no effect on me. You, of all people, should appreciate that.” As usual, Spock had the last word. Smiling to himself, Kirk started a brisk march towards the hill.

EVA suits were bulky and restrictive to movement. They had to be in order to provide the protection they were designed to give. To his relief, Kirk found that the bulk of his suit was virtually offset by the reduced gravity of the planet, the only hampering effects being the reduction in movement.

The dust floor shifted with each step, throwing plumes of rust coloured grit up to waist level. They walked in silence, the only thing he could hear being the crackle of static punctuated by the succinct voice of Uhura trying to contact the Enterprise. Through his suit communicator she sounded as though she were only a few metres away, yet in the short time they had been walking they had covered several kilometres. Kirk waved a hand, commanding the others to halt. He stood for a moment, scanning the slopes of the now much closer pyramid. He nodded to himself, then turned slowly to examine the landscape. The shuttle, looking small and toy-like, was huddled against the edge of the ‘forest’ below them. As they were above the treetop level the electrical halo was diminished in effect, but the occasional spark of blue fire boiled out of the darkness below.

“Any word from the Enterprise, Lieutenant?”

Amid a crackle of static Uhura’s voice hissed out of his earphones. “No, Sir. You’re getting very faint, strength one by threes. Interference is getting …”

“Lieutenant?” He jabbed gloved fingers at the communications channel in the top of his chest pack. “Spock? Any success?”

“No, Captain. Intense interference. Much higher than levels recorded earlier.”

McCoy paced round to face Kirk. “But we’re still in line of sight of the shuttle.”

“Yes. I’ve never seen interference like this.”

“I do not think this is interference.”

Kirk started. “Explain, Spock.”

“Lieutenant Uhura may be correct in her assumption that the communication jamming is deliberate. No normal interference should obliterate the suit systems at this short range …”

“And especially since we’re still in sight. Yes, Spock. I see what you mean.” He took another look at the disturbingly quiet pyramid behind them. “Right. Back to the shuttle. I only hope Hansa’s got the sense to as well.”

A point of light burst from the side of the shuttle. Kirk instinctively ducked, churning up a cloud of dust as he skidded to a stop. The light was flashing, a regular, repeated pulse. Spock’s voice rasped in his ear.

“Emergency code. The Lieutenant has found a method of communicating with us.” There was a rattle of static and his voice disappeared under a mass of unintelligible signals. 

Kirk pushed himself upright, mentally cursing the confinement of his suit. Moments later they were against the reassuringly familiar flank of the shuttle. Uhura lowered the floodlamp onto the engine pylon as Kirk pulled at the ‘buddy line’ in its socket under his backpack. He plugged it into a similar socket on the pack of Uhura’s suit, the staccato of interference clearing to be replaced by the light rhythmic hiss of her breathing.

“What happened, Lieutenant?”

“Signal from Hansa, Sir. He said he’d found something and was going to investigate. Then the static closed in and I can’t raise him.”

“But we lost your transmission. Why the cause for panic?”

“I still got your carrier signals. And Spock’s and McCoy’s. Hansa’s went dead shortly after his audio circuits cut out.”

“Carrier signals?”

“A few second after. Now there’s nothing, not even on telemetry.”

Kirk waved Spock into the shuttle. McCoy, a worried expression on his face, pounded up the ramp behind him. “Tell Spock to get a fix on me. I’m going to take a look. Close up the ship, but keep it ready to let us in.”

“Aye aye, Sir.”

He picked up the floodlamp as she disappeared into the ship. A hurried check on his suit status and he started into the forest, following the partially obscured footprints. They led him through a clump of the crystal flowers and across a narrow clearing into denser cover.

A plaintive whistle piped out over his earphones, signifying a trace beam had latched onto him. Something metallic glistened off to his right. He ducked under a stone branch and knelt over the object. His gauntlet pawed at the wreckage, and he lifted something up to his visor. The instrument pack. He turned over the shattered piece of casing. The surface was crushed and pitted. Whatever had smashed it had done a thorough job. He straightened, letting the fragment fall lazily to the ground. He felt something through his boots – a vibration, something heavy hitting the ground close by. He stood as rock still as the trees around him, straining with all his senses for any information. He turned, slowly, scanning the darkness between they grey pillars. Nothing. He looked down for the trail of footprints. His own ran back towards the shuttle, its white slab sides glowing eerily in the starlight. The tracer still hummed reassuringly in his ‘phones. He strode deeper into the gloom.

Another clearing, the ground getting greyer the deeper he got into the patch of unearthly growth. He thumbed the control of the lamp and a white cone of energy sliced into the gloom. The beam struck crystal points of light from the ridged tree trunks. He swept the light like a sabre, slicing chunks out of the darkness.

He stepped forward, scanning the ground for more tracks. There had been nothing intelligible since the site of the wreckage. He brushed against a tree. A cracking sound conducted through his suit and an automatic reflex pulled his body to one side as a great black shape heaved itself down at him. He rolled in the grey dust, fighting for balance in the low gravity with the heavy suit, at the same time clawing for his phaser. Heedless of a torn suit he kicked himself to his knees, the phaser held before him, the lamp forgotten for a moment and lying, its beam dim, by his side.

Blinking in the dim light he focussed on a vague grey shape lying motionless in a pool of dust. He cautiously stood upright, the phaser still aimed squarely at the object, and felt for the lamp. His glove closed over the light.

As the beam fell on the object he relaxed, almost crying out loud with surprise and relief. The shape held so tightly in the light was nothing more than a petrified branch, his impact with the tree causing it to sheer cleanly and fall, almost crushing him in the process. He vowed to steer clear of these brittle trees in future, and again swung the beam about the forest.

Suddenly in the corner of one eye he saw movement. He aimed both the phaser and the lamp. A claw floated into view. As he neared it, it resolved itself into an EVA gauntlet. He bounded over. AS he approached the rest of the suit appeared, and it became apparent that its owner was in trouble.

He kneeled against the feebly struggling suit. The legs were trapped under a large chunk of fossil tree, the chestpack and faceplate a mass of dust. He propped the lamp on a stone tree stump and started to dig under the prone figure to release the buddy line. He tugged at the nozzle assembly, release his own and squirted a jet of neat oxygen at it to clear the dust. He plugged the two together and waited for the pumps to circulate a clean supply of atmosphere into the other’s suit. As he waited he swept the face plate clear of dust, revealing Hansa’s drawn face, his skin grey in the colourless light reflected from the rows of trees above him. His eyes flickered and his breath rapsed over the intercom.

“Hansa.”

“Wha … wassamarrar … uh, CAPTAIN?” His eyes snapped wide with terror. “MY GOD! THE TREE …”

“Lieutenant!” Kirk forced himself to moderate his voice. “Hansa. Karl. It’s Kirk here.”

“Captain?” Where’s ...?”

“Are you hurt? Any bones broken?”

“Uh. Dunno. Legs are trapped. What happened?”

“I don’t know. You’ve got a tree trunk across your legs.” Kirk mentally hefted the trunk. Even under this low gravity it would be too much for him out of his suit, let alone in it. “Hansa, I can’t move this on my own. I’ll have to get help. Understand?”

Hansa managed a weak smile. “Aye aye, Sir.”

Kirk stood, took a last glance at the suit and turned to stride out for the shuttle. At that moment he felt uneasy. Something had change. He marched on, the doubt still nagging at the back of his mind …

The tracer! He stopped, ears straining for any evidence of the signal over the crisp chatter of static. Foreboding thudded down over him like a thick fog. He struck out for the shuttle, dodging low branches automatically, moving as fast as safety would permit. His spirits rose, though not by much, as the bluish shape of the shuttle appeared through the pillars of stone. Almost as an afterthought he drew his phaser, holstered as he knelt to tend to Hansa. He paused at the limit of the treeline, casting a critical eye over the shuttle and its surroundings. He edged cautiously forward, approaching the rear panel. Standing in the shadow cast by the back of the shuttle, he ran a gauntleted hand over the frame of the inspection panel, feeling for vibrations.

He rounded the port corner and made his way along the engine pod, pausing against the leading edge of the port stub wing. He leaned over the pod and lightly rested his helmet against the hull plate. Any sound inside should conduct through the hard surface and he would hear it inside his helmet.

Nothing, not a sound from inside the ship or the ship itself. He stood upright, firmed his grip on the phaser and stepped towards the door. The ramp was raised and the door plates were firmly in place, flush with the rest of the panel. He took a pace nearer the bows of the shuttle and reached for the control panel to the left of the lower half of the door. As the motor whirred into efficient life he stood back, phaser levelled at the centre of the door.

The lower panel dropped downwards and out, revealing the gloomy interior. Framed in the opening was a suited figure, a phaser aimed at the centre of his faceplate. “Spock! Am I glad to see you!”

The figure straightened from its defensive crouch, the phaser slipping neatly into its retaining catch at the belt of the suit. “Captain?”

“Never mind. Bones, it’s Hansa. He’s trapped under a chunk of rock out there. You, too, Spock. I’ll need help shifting it. What happened to the tracer?”

Uhura’s suit appeared beside Spock as McCoy descended the ramp. “Captain?”

“The tracer. It cut out while I was attending to Hansa.”

“We’re still transmitting the tracer. But your telemetry went out, just like Hansa’s.”

“Do you still read your own telemetry?”

“Yes. But none of you. Not even Spock, of McCoy …”

“Spock? Could the radiation be affecting the equipment?”

“I do not know, Captain. Hansa is our radiation expert.”

“Yes, of course. This is going to have to wait. Ready, Bones?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” growled the doctor. “Hey, I can hear you?”

“Of course you can,” Kirk almost snapped at him, then, realisation dawning, he turned to Uhura. “Yes. Our communicators were out a few minutes ago. Any change in the radiation. Spock?”

The science officer checked his tricorder. “No appreciable change over the past readings, Captain. Most odd.”

“And you’ve been in the shuttle for the past few minutes. Did you decontaminate the suits?”

Of course, Captain. A routine procedure … a moment.” He aimed the tricorder at the ground.

“What is it, Jim? You haven’t forgotten about Hansa?”

“No, Bones, but …”

“Static electricity!” Spock turned to face them, a handful of the dust held up for them to see. “The geosphere contains a high proportion of ferrite elements. The radiation discharge products are highly charged …”

“And we’re loaded with dust. Coat the circuitry with enough static electricity and the field effect components won’t work,” Uhura smiled behind her crystal faceplate. “I can soon cure that. More shielding on the …”

“Get to it, Lieutenant. Spock, Bones, let’s see to Hansa. If we start to lose comm. Contact blow off the backpacks with air from the purge cylinders. Got that? Right, let’s go.”

Spock handed Kirk another floodlamp and they set off at a handy trot towards Hansa’s location. Kirk followed his own footprints, standing out clearly in the harsh beam from the flood. McCoy, his breath rasping slightly through Kirk’s earphones, fell in behind him. Spock took the rear, carrying an alloy core tube from the soil sample kit.

Kirk suddenly realised his footprints were beginning to get more and more indistinct. He slowed his pace, following the thinning tracks with progressively increasing care. Funny, though no wind could be felt through his suit, the lightly stirring clouds of dust didn’t appear to be moving enough to cover tracks this quickly. He had slowed to a walking pace now, sweeping the flood beam from left to right, attempting to identify unusual rock forms spotted on his earlier trip through the forest.

“Captain!” Spock’s voice cut through the static. “To our right, about twenty metres.”

He swung the beam of the flood around, then dimmed it. A faint glow filtered past the stone pillars like a single candle in a massive cathedral.

“The flood?”

“Could be, Bones. Come on, no sense in standing on ceremony.”

They struck out for the point of light, for Kirk and McCoy at least, with renewed hope. Kirk stepped past the last line of trees and stopped dead in his tracks. Hansa was gone. McCoy appeared beside him.

“Here?”

“Yes, I left him by this treestump. There’s the flood.” Spock picked up the light, its feeble glow flickering lamely as he did. He put it down, the light extinguishing as he did so.

Kirk, a sudden feeling of impotence washing over him, looked round, only to be faced by the anonymous flanks of the long dead trees. Spock pulled a silver cylinder from the back of his suit and aimed its nozzle at the defunct floodlamp. There was a haze of dust and it flared into life, a strong beam burning into the otherwise invisible cloud of ash thrown up. Knowing the failure of the equipment could be so easily cured did nothing to console him for the loss of Hansa.

“Back to the shuttle. Fast. From now on we’ll treat this place as hostile.” Spock picked up the other floodlamp and the group started back for the ship. “Spock, I want the interior of the ship cleaned out and all the circuitry checked. Then help Uhura fix up shielding for our suits and the ship itself.”

“What about Hansa, Jim?”

“I don’t know, Bones. Yet. Spock, how long can we stand exposure to this radiation?”

“On revised and unchecked estimates I would put the period of safety remaining in the region of approximately nine hours, fifty-two and a half minutes of total suit exposure, indefinitely in the shuttle.”

Kirk couldn’t help but smile at that ‘approximate’ estimate. “All right, we fit and test the shielding, then make a proper search of the place.”

“And if we can’t find Hansa?”

Kirk frowned to himself. “Then we cross that bridge when we come to it.”

The shuttle loomed up in the gloom. Uhura was waiting for them in the open hatchway when they arrived. McCoy blew the dust from the back of Kirk’s suit, the interference dying with its removal.

“Any contact with the Enterprise?”

“They’re on our blind side, Captain. I’m waiting for them to complete an orbit before I try again.”

“You have the modifications to the suits?”

“Yes, Captain. I’ve had to cannibalise the spare backpack for parts, but I’ve enough components to make shield for all the suits and the main control panel.”

“Including Hansa’s?”

“Yes, I … where’s Hansa?”

“It’s a long story. Spock, Bones. Into the ship. Full decontamination procedures and ship purge. Pity these ships don’t have an airlock.” He gave the landscape one last check, gazing for a moment at the pyramid. There was something about that thing that …

The closing hatchway cut off his thoughts about the hill as it eclipsed his view of it. There was a whirring as the atmosphere of the shuttle was pumped through filters and replace with inert gas. He waited patiently as jets of vapour were played over his suit, then went through the procedure on McCoy’s suit. The decontamination procedure was time consuming but efficient: a few minutes later and the ship began to fill with a compatible atmosphere and, thankfully, Kirk could unclip his helmet.

With a sigh of relief he slumped down into the command seat and began to unclip the retaining straps of his backpack. Efficient as the environment pack was, it couldn’t remove the perspiration borne of fear and tension. He pushed the helmet onto an adhesive pad on top of the console in front of him, removed the gauntlets and dropped them into the helmet. He stood out of the backpack and shrugged off the heavy suit itself, stretching the knots and kinks out of his spine.

McCoy stepped forward, and handed him a bulb of hot coffee, which he accepted gratefully. He took a generous pull at the sweet liquid.

“”Oh, I needed that. How’re the suits coming on, Spock?”

The granite face appeared over a gutted instrument package. “The modifications are a relatively simple task. The packs will be ready presently.”

“Here, Spock. Have some coffee. You need it.” McCoy handed him the hot beverage. Spock took it.

“You have my gratitude, Doctor.” He took a token sip of the coffee and placed the container on the floor beside him, forgotten in his attention to the job at hand.

Kirk folded the suit over an unoccupied seat and lowered himself carefully into the command chair. He was prodding absently at a bank of control studs when he was conscious of McCoy by his side.

“Hi, Bones. Anything I can do?”

“No, Jim. Just wondering what you propose to do if you can’t find Hansa.”

He shut off the panel impatiently. “I don’t know, Bones. The obvious thing to do is get a sensor sweep by the Enterprise, but we don’t even know if we can contact them yet.”

“And if we can’t contact them?”

“There’s nothing much else we can do apart from …”

“Captain! I have the ship …”

Kirk bounded out of his chair and leaned over Uhura at the communications board.

“Kirk to Enterprise. Do you read ..?”

“Enterprise here. Scott reporting.”

“Scotty, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in ages. Do you have any sensor pickups? We have a landing party member missing down here.”

“A moment, Captain. Nothing yet, but we’re still trying.”

“Any news on the transporter?”

“Still no go, Captain. But we’re trying something …” The voice faded out in a burst of static.

“What’s happening, Lieutenant?”

Uhura’s fingers flew across the panel. Finally, she stopped trying. “Same as before. Total spectrum blackout.”

“They’re quick, whoever they are. It only took them a couple of minutes to work out how we got round their first block.”

“Sir?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant. Just thinking out aloud.”

“You think that it really is someone out there blocking our signals deliberately?”

“It’s beginning to look like it, Bones. But I’m beginning to wonder what kind of life can exist on as hostile a planet as this. I’ve not seen a single sign of life – nothing but rock, dust, and more dust. I …”

“A robotic civilisation would be capable of surviving such and environment.” Spock lifted his head to contemplate Kirk and McCoy over the top of the now reassembled backpack.

“Surely you’re not suggesting …” began McCoy.

“I suggest nothing, doctor. I merely point out that a society of cybernetic devices, or a civilisation dependant on such devices, could tolerate this environment, having, of course, made provision to protect itself from the extremes of the surface conditions.”

Kirk twisted his seat round to face him. You mean shelters, closed buildings like the mining planets of the federation?”

“Yes, Captain. The obvious solution is to bury the city beneath the surface of the planet. I estimate that, if conditions have remained approximately constant over the past hundred years, a lyer of surface strata no more than twenty five point zero eight metres would serve to absorb the higher fractions of radiation, cutting the …”

“You mean that there could still be life on this planet, buried beneath us at this very minute?”

“That is a distinct possibility, doctor.”

“How are you so sure, Spock?”

“I am not, Captain. However, we know that sophisticated, if automatic, machinery is still in operation – the signal generation, the force fields and the jamming of the communications systems, indicating that devices are still being fed with power …”

McCoy, realising what Spock was saying, pounced. “Automatic machinery, Spock. Not a civilisation, but the machinery of a dead civilisation …”

“That, I concede to, doctor. What you suggest is a possibility, but the converse is also true. A robot society could be in existence …”

“Or the original, organic society could still be alive.”

“Captain?”

“Yes, of course, Jim. We’re too busy blinding ourselves with scientific doubletalk.” Spock’s left eyebrow crawled up his forehead. McCoy ignored it and carried on. “While Hansa could be down there somewhere.”

Kirk nodded. “And rock thick enough to shield radiation would shield our sensors. There must be a way down near here. Lieutenant Uhura, are the suits ready?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Good. Bones, you stay here. Spock, Uhura and I will test the suits and make a preliminary search around the spot I last saw Hansa.”

“Okay, Jim. I’ll keep tabs on you over the comm.”

“Right. Suit up and stay together.”

The landscape was as unchanging as it had been when the shuttle had first touched down. Kirk was remembering the tree structures he had passed on his earlier trips. As it turned out, he didn’t need to. His footprints, and those of Spock and McCoy, were still plainly visible in the dust. This should have made him cautious, but …

He took the lead, Uhura behind him to the left, Spock as usual to the right and behind them both, the floodlamp scything through the darkness. They paused at the point where Kirk found Hansa, Spock taking tricorder readings while Uhura contacted McCoy in the shuttle. A moment’s work and she stepped confidently to Kirk.

“The modifications seem to work. The dust is no trouble now, and we’re too close to the shuttle and each other for heavy jamming to affect us.”

“Good. Bones?” Even though McCoy could have heard him had he merely whispered, he still raised his voice a fraction, as if physical distance separated them instead of the centimetre or so between his microphone and mouth.

“Here, Jim.”

“We’re back at the spot I found Hansa. Still no sign of him. Spock’s checking for … Bones?” A growl of static juddered in his earphones. “Kirk to McCoy. Bones! Lieutenant, I thought you said the jamming shouldn’t work this close.”

She worked a bank of controls on her forearm. “It’s not jamming, Sir.”

An icy hand clutched at the pit of his stomach. “Not … jamming?”

“No, Sir. He’s just not transmitting.”

Kirk clenched a fist inside his gauntlet. “Back to the shuttle. Phasers on heavy stun. Keep a channel open, Lieutenant. I want to know the moment he starts to transmit.” If he starts to transmit, was his unspoken thought.

Risking a torn suit he plunged headlong through the forest, skidding to a dusty stop behind the shuttle. The door panels slid aside, and he dropped to one knee, the phaser rock steady in front of him.

“Bones?” He stood upright. The interior of the shuttle was dim, a faint red and green glow from the flight deck shining from the black plastic coating of the seat across from the doorway. He edged forward, glancing right and left through the confines of the visor frame.

“Bones. Answer me.”

He leaped for the hatchway, his plastic soled boots skidding on the dust on the access ramp. He landed at a crouch at the back of the co-pilot’s seat, his eyes following the aim of the phaser.

The shuttle was empty.

The planet had claimed another of his crew.


	3. Chapter 3

“Oh, no.”

Kirk’s groan of dismay was caught by his ever attentive helmet mike and transmitted to the others waiting outside the shuttle.

“Captain? What ..?” Uhura, framed in the hatchway, looked into the empty cabin. Kirk stood, absently replacing the phaser in his belt.

“Try the Enterprise again, Lieutenant. Spock ..?”

“Captain, if you would examine this.”

Frowning, Kirk turned his back on the depressing interior and thudded to the ground beside his First Officer. He followed an outstretched finger pointed at the red dust. Scored down to hard rock were a series of grooves, as if made by a snow plough.

“Tracks? A sled? Vehicle?”

“I do not know. Apparently it is intended that we follow them.”

“Apparently?”

“No tracks were found after the disappearance of Hansa. It is logical to assume that the same applies here. These tracks were left deliberately, therefore we are intended to follow them.”

Kirk frowned, considering this idea for a moment. “Yes, I see. Lieutenant Uhura, any luck with the comm?”

“No, Captain. Still too much interference.”

“Well, we can’t just sit here and wait for the radiation to filter through our suits, and I don’t propose to leave McCoy and Hansa here. I …”

“Captain, is that wise? We could …”

“I’m not leaving until I’ve found the others. Uh, sorry, Spock, but theses tracks are asking us to follow them. It’s our only lead to finding the rest of my crew.”

“Agreed, Captain. However …”

“However, it looks too much like a trap. Yes, I agree. But we have no other choice. I want to get to the bottom of this, and these tracks are the first real lead we’ve had.” He turned to the shuttle. Uhura was stood in the hatchway, waiting for orders. “Check out the suits and replace the powercells, the same as the flood lamps. If this civilisation is underground I don’t want to have to risk having the blunder about in the dark.”

Minutes later saw the much depleted landing crew set out in search of their comrades. The tracks led deep into the forest and like Kirk’s footprints were still distinct. They walked in silence, each preoccupied with his or her own thoughts. The crystalline plant life was everywhere, but their beauty was lost on Kirk, and soon he ignored them altogether. Had he paid more attention he would have noticed a particular type with a large bulbous head turn to follow them as they passed …

Deep in the pyramid hill an eye watched their progress on a circular screen. A metal claw touched a glowing disc and the picture jumped and changed. Another eye joined the first at its vigil. The owner of the first eye spoke.

NOTE HOW WELL THE SENSE OF SOCIETY HAS BECOME IN THIS SUBJECT.

AGREED. A LOGICAL ACTION WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ATTEMPT AT DEPARTURE IN THE FLYING DEVICE.

AFFIRMATIVE. DO WE ALLOW THEM INTO THE FIRST LEVEL?

AFFIRMATIVE. MAINTAIN SCAN. THIS IS AN ADAPTABLE SUBJECT.

AGREED. THE BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS ARE COMPLEX.

INFORM ME OF THEIR ENTRANCE INTO THE FIRST LEVEL. I WISH TO OBSERVE.

I OBEY.

The second eye backed away from the screen. The first eye resumed its unblinking vigil.

“Spock, what do you make of this?” Kirk had halted before an unusually square chunk of rock. Only its shape set it apart from its neighbouring landscape. The edge of the forest lay behind them, having given way to a gently undulating plain littered with slabs of granite. Spock unshipped his tricorder and took a pace forward.

“Interesting. Evidence of workmanship. Extreme age indicated. It appears to be hollow. I register a large discontinuity in the base rock.”

“A tunnel?”

“It would appear so.”

“But what is it for? The tracks still continue across this plain.” He pointed to a series fo slits near the top of the block. “And why those holes? It almost looks like a ventilation cover.” He frowned. “Could it be a ventilation shaft?”

“Inadequate data. However, it would appear to be such.”

Kirk glanced at the tracks leading across the plain. “I think it’s about time we did something off our own bat. Can we cut into this thing?”

“Affirmative, Captain. The tunnel drops for approximately five metres then levels out in that direction.” He pointed behind him. Kirk didn’t miss the significance.

“Towards the pyramid, eh? Come on, Spock. The sooner we cut into this thing, the nearer we’ll be to some answers.” He drew his phaser and set it to high power on a narrow beam. Spock hesitated. “Something wrong, Spock?”

“Something I cannot explain. Something McCoy would call ‘intuition.’ There appears to be too convenient an occurrence that the tracks should led us so close to this structure.”

“You mean it could be a put-up job?”

“Captain?”

“It could all have been planned by whoever wanted us to follow these tracks.”

Spock nodded inside his helmet. “Affirmative.”

“But we only have the tracks themselves as a lead, and even they may peter out at any moment. Either they want us to follow the tracks, or they want us to go down this tunnel. Either way it’s they who call the shots. But if this is a mistake, it’s a chance for us to use it to our advantage.”

“A valid point, Captain.”

“Then it’s settled. Fire on my command, Spock.”

EXCELLENT. THESE CREATURES HAVE HIGHLY ADVANCED DEDUCTIVE PROCESSES. SECURE THE FLYING MACHINE. INFORM ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL TO PREPARE THE HOLDING CHAMBERS.

I OBEY.

Chunks of the cover fell glowing to the sterile sand. Spock made a pass with his tricorder and made to step over the cracked and fused lip of the tunnel. Kirk placed a restraining arm over his shoulder.

“Commanding Officer’s privilege, Spock. Cover me, I’ll go down first. “

He looked down. A faint yellow glow filtered up from the horizontal tunnel below. Kirk glanced across the smashed cover at Uhura, then stepped over the lip. The gap was narrow. Kirk jammed his backpack against the smooth wall and braced with his feet on the other. He took a deep breath and eased the pressure slightly, letting himself slide a few centimeters down the featureless tube. A five metre drop was still far enough to fall even in this reduced gravity. He eased his right foot a couple of centimeters, braced it hard, unlocked the left knee and moved the foot. Then, maintaining grip with both arms, he slipped the backpack a fraction nearer the ground below.

He paused for breath. Craning his neck back against the retaining collar of the suit he could just see the disk of starlight above him, the two semi-circular bite in it being the helmets of Spock and Uhura. He could feel the pinprick of cramp biting into his legs, and his back was burning. Suddenly his left foot lost traction on the wall opposite, and with a stomach wrenching clatter he began to plummet towards the hard tunnel floor below.

He was still fighting for traction when he emerged from the vertical tunnel, to land with a horrendous clattering impact that drove every last drop of air from his lungs.

“Captain? Captain, are you all right?” Spock’s voice drifted to him over the singing of his ears.

“Uh, yes. Okay, Spock. Just shook up a little. Watch the last metre or so. The tunnel widens slightly. I lost grip on the walls.”

There was a grating sound, and Kirk stood side as Uhura thudded to the fabricated floor beside him. He walked directly under the shaft as Spock dropped the first of the two flood lamps. He gauged its drop, watching it roll lazily in the reduced gravity until it dropped lightly into his outstretched arms. He handed it to Uhura as he waited for the other. Presently Spock had joined them in the tunnel

The eerie yellow glow that bathed them in its weird light was unexplained until, with their advance along the gently sloping floor, they discovered rings of glowtubes set into the wall.

“Scintillation tubes. Long half-life. They will burn for thousands of years. Apparently this system was designed to last a considerable time.”

“Yes, but what’s it all for, Spock?”

“Its structure equates strongly with a ventilation or overflow duct. A waste pipe, or exhaust system.”

“Like a glorified air conditioning unit?”

“A possible function.”

Kirk nodded. “I think we’ll trust to these glowtubes for light. We may need the floods later. He glanced back to the shaft of light pouring from their point of entry. The tunnel was dark, but not so they couldn’t see far enough ahead to detect anything coming, should anything else inhabit the tomb-like conduits.

Though the tunnel continued both sides of the vertical shaft, Kirk decided the down sloping arm would be a better course of action. They marched on in silence, Kirk peering along the ever deepening shaft, Spock intent on his tricorder, Uhura occupied with her own thoughts. Kirk was beginning to feel the claustrophobic effects of the tunnel, the walls seeming to close nearer to him with each step. He tried not to look at the chronometer on his chest pack, and found himself counting the narrow bands of light that illuminated their progress. He was beginning to wish something would happen – anything to break the monotony, when the shaft came to an abrupt halt. So preoccupied with his own thoughts, it almost took him by surprise. Lost for a moment, he looked around. The tunnel hadn’t stopped, it had merely split, a ‘T’ shaped junction, each arm falling away at a steeper angle than the section they were in.

“Any ideas, Spock?”

Spock aimed his tricorder down each tunnel in turn and consulted the display screen. “Superficially the two tunnels appear to be identical. However, I detect a pressure differential between this left shaft and this tunnel.”

“What? An air flow?”

“A gas flow,” Spock corrected. “Primarily nitrogen, plus inert gases, helium, argon and krypton.”

“Nitrogen again. Why nitrogen, I wonder.”

“Captain?”

“Ever seen a planet that has an atmosphere almost a hundred percent nitrogen? I know most planets have it in their atmosphere, but never at such a high percentage.”

“Agreed, Captain. This is an anomaly that at present I cannot explain.”

“What do we use nitrogen for, Spock?”

The suit considered this for a moment. “Under normal atmospheric condition a relatively inert gas. A dilutant for oxygen in class ‘M’ type planetary bodies, it performs no function in the chemical bio-functions of conventional air breathing life forms. A pressurant in crude liquid fuelled chemical propulsion systems …”

“Inert.”

“Captain?”

“It’s inert. The stuff won’t react with metals – store them in nitrogen and they don’t rust.”

“Helium would perform a similar function at a higher efficiency …”

“Yes, but what if they don’t have enough helium to go round? They’d use the next best thing. This planet once had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. What if they started enough fires on the planet to consume all the oxygen in one go, and leave the nitrogen? No oxygen, no oxidation, no corrosion.”

“You keep saying ‘they’, Captain. ‘They’ who?”

“Whoever built this, Lieutenant.”

“You think they’re still alive?”

“I don’t know. But something’s still working down there. It takes energy to circulate gas like this. It could just be convection over a hot spot in the crust of this planet, but with tunnels like this I find that too much of a coincidence. No, somebody, or somethings is still down here. Those tracks prove it.”

“Captain.”

“Yes, Spock?”

“Your inert nitrogen theory explains the presence of the gas in the atmosphere, however, it does not explain its methods of introduction. The primary result of the combustion of a class ‘M’ atmosphere is the generation of carbon oxides, usually dioxide and monoxide. Carbon dioxide is present in the atmosphere, but in insufficient quantities with such an occurrence.”

“Hmm. I see. Well, it was just a theory.”

“I shall endeavour to resolve the conflict.”

“Do that, Spock. But meanwhile we’ll press on. You said the air flow was from the left tunnel.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Kirk stepped onto the angle floor. The tunnel lost some of its brightness. The light rings were spaced much further apart. Kirk resisted the temptation to turn on his floodlamp and marched on. The ceiling was lower, and they had to proceed at a half crouch. Kirk felt his back muscles begin to complain. He was beginning to wonder how long the tunnel was in front of them when Spock’s voice crackled over his communicator.

“Captain, I detect a discontinuity in the wall ahead.”

Kirk stopped, reaching for his phaser. “Any idea what it is?”

“It appears to be a grill or grating of steel alloy.”

“Wait here. I’ll check it out.” Drawing the phaser he edged forward. After a dozen metres he came to the opening. Set into the stone wall was a rectangle, approximately a metre square, fashioned of some unidentified metal, shining dully in the yellow glow emanating from the other side. Running vertically, spaced a few centimetres apart, were strips of ally set at a forty-five degree angle in the frame.

Kirk leaned back against the wall and brought the phaser up to his faceplate. Checking the settings, he spun round against the curving wall opposite the grille, aiming the phaser through it. A short section of conduit opening onto an anonymous section of wall stared impassively back. He straightened, a sheepish expression on his face.

“Okay, Spock. All clear. Looks like a corridor at last.”

The two suits joined him. Sock examined the frame, then made a pass with the tricorder.

“As was expected. This is a simple air pump. Gas flowing through this tunnel draws gas from the section through there. The frame is a press fit. It should prove easy to remove, should you wish to investigate that section.”

“Yes, I do wish to investigate that section. I’m tired of grubbing about like a mole, and these suits weren’t designed for confined movement.” He eyed the gap critically. “We should be able to get our suits through there.”

He handed the floodlamp to Uhura and wrapped the fingers of his gloves tentatively round a pair of the grille strips. With a sharp intake of breath he heaved backwards, expecting the strips to jam hard in their sockets. Though muffled by his suit and helmet, he still heard the scream of tearing metal as the grille parted company from the wall, his momentum carrying him hard against the opposite wall.

Kirk stared in surprise at the warped metal in his hands. Uhura bent over him asking ‘are you hurt?’ sounds, while Spock contemplated the damage with a strange expression on his face.

“Most unusual. The alloy appears to have suffered a unique form of fatigue.” He helped Kirk to his feet, retrieving the remains of the grille as he did so.

“How unique, Spock?”

“Again I am at a loss to explain. The analysis puts the composition of this grill in the same class as the heat treated steel alloys, yet it appears to have separated out into its component ingredients, with little adhesion between the …”

“Uh, stick to words of less than three syllables, please, Spock. What happened to it?”

“It appears to have been converted from a high performance alloy to a non-homogenous mixture, losing most of its material properties in the process.”

Kirk considered this for a moment, suddenly realising what it meant.

“You mean something has disrupted the metal to the extent that it’s less than useless as a material?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Any idea how?”

“I have seen such an effect only two occasions. One, during a transporter malfunction, when a pressure vessel was assembled out of phase.”

“And two?”

“In the ancient dwelling caves of Hermes IV. In that case the structural alteration was caused by only one thing.”

“Which was?”

“Age, Captain. Extreme age. The cave dwellings of Hermes IV are estimated to be millions of years old.”

Kirk turned the phrase over in his mind. Millions of years …

THAT ONE INTERESTS ME.

COMMANDER?

THE SCIENTIST. THE ONE WHO EXPLAINS.

YES. MOST UNUSUAL. IT IS UNTYPICAL OF THE OTHER HUMANS.

I WANT THAT ONE. THE OTHERS ARE EXPENDABLE. BUT I WANT THAT ONE PRESERVED. THERE ARE SOME INTERESTING EXPERIEMENTS I WISH TO PERFORM ON IT.

UNDERSTOOD.

“Well, however old this place is, we won’t find out much about it sitting here. The light seems to be better through there. Think it’s a proper corridor, Spock?”

“Assuming that this is a ventilation shaft, logic would dictate that it is indeed a conventional corridor.”

“Well, that’s good enough for me. Wait until I give the signal to follow. We don’t know if there’ll be a reception committee.”

“Understood, Captain.”

“Yes, Captain …”

“Was there something, Lieutenant?”

“Well, nothing I could put my finger on, but … well, I keep getting the feeling I’m being watched …”

HAVE THEY SHOWN SIGNS OF EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION BEFORE?

NO COMMANDER. DO WE SHUT DOWN THE MONITOR SYSTEMS?

NO, MAINTAIN SURVEILLANCE. MENTION WOULD HAVE BEEN MADE HAD THEY DISCOVERED THE CAMERAS.

I OBEY.

“I know what you mean. This place isn’t as dead as it makes out to be.”

He inched his helmet into the newly formed hole in the wall, backed out again, then: “It seems to be big enough.” He replaced the phaser on his belt. “Follow only if I give the order.”

He eased his bulky suit into the gap, pushing forward on his hands. After a metre or so he reached another grille. He pressed the faceplate as near as he could to the bars, but could see no more than a gleaming wall opposite, merging with a floor of similar material. With a muttered “here goes,” more to himself than the others, he pushed outward with his left hand.

As it contacted the grill there was a brilliant blue flash. There was a deafening burst of static in his earphones, and he saw fine trails of electric arc pouring off the sharp corners of his suit and chest pack. Frozen in shock, his only sensation was a prickle of ozone in his helmet and a pins and needles tingle across his back.

“Captain? Captain, are you all right?”

“Phew! Yes, yes. Okay, Spock. No panic. There must have been enough current flowing in that grill to blow a dilithium crystal assembly. I think I earthed it through the suit. Hold on a minute.”

He reached out again, ore carefully this time. The grid was blackened at the edges, and a silver pool of molten metal ran from one corner. Whatever it was, it must have been a massive charge. Kirk was suddenly thankful for his heavy suit. He padded at the grill as a kitten would at a strange new toy. No sparks. He pressed firmly. The grill came away in a cloud of ash, to clatter noisily on the floor below.

He edged forward again, supporting himself on his elbows. His helmet pushed reluctantly from the scarred frame, and he could see the rest of the corridor. It was empty. The whole thing appeared to be made of beaten gold, burnished to a semi-matt lustre. Every few metres a steel coloured frame spanned the corridor. The corridor seemed to vanish in both directions, like a crazy optical illusion, the panel lines emerging as if at infinity. Kirk decided that, if nothing else, this corridor was long.

“Captain?” Spock’s insistent voice broke into his thoughts.

“All seems clear here. Let me get down and you can come through.” He felt above the frame for a rim or a handhold. Thankfully his fingers closed around a lip above the frame, and with the minimum of contortions was out of the duct and onto the floor. Uhura came next, passing down the floodlamps as she came. She was marveling at the strange beauty of the corridor as Spock landed, catlike, behind her.

“It’s incredible. Just like gold.”

“It is gold.”

“Spock?”

“Extreme purity, twenty to twenty four carat. A thin layer over what appears to be a titanium alloy. The wall frames are also of titanium.”

“Gold? Titanium?” Kirk glanced round him. “But why? Gold isn’t usually a very common metal at the best of times, neither is titanium. There must be thousands of tons in this corridor alone.”

“The materials are a logical choice.”

“Logical choice? For what?”

“Titanium for hardness and structural stability, gold for permanence. As a metal, gold is virtually indestructible.”

“In other words, this gold is nothing more than a glorified paint job?”

“In the traditional form of paint, as a protective layer, yes.”

Kirk was silent for a moment, bathed in the golden glow of the translucent light panels above him. “A golden city, millions of years old. Incredible. But it still has McCoy and Hansa. Which direction, Spock?”

“There are no …”

There was a tremor in the floor. Several metres along the corridor, at the next frame, a gold panel was sliding into place, sealing off that section. Kirk broke out in a run, charging the door in the vain hope he could beat it before it closed. He was a fraction too late. With an intense feeling of being manipulated, he returned to the others.

“That appears to make up our minds. We go this way.”

“That would appear to be the only solution, Captain.”

Kirk shot a look that would freeze lava at the golden door. Truly the place was becoming a gilded cage. He picked up one of the floodlamps and led the others along the corridor.

A MOST UNUSUAL REACTION.

YES, THE SUBJECT HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING THAT GOING THROUGH THAT DOOR WOULD BE OF ANY USE, YET IT PERSISTED IN THE ATTEMPT.

THEIR INFERENCE OF PHYSICAL INFORMATION GAINED FROM THE CITY ARE MOST ASTUTE.

A HIGH INTELLIGENCE.

CORRECT, BUT TEMPERED BY FORCE. WE MAY UTILISE SUCH INSTINCTS.

DO WE PROGRESS TO THE NEXT STAGE?

NO, MORE INFORMATION MAY BE GAINED BY OBSERVATION OF THIS SITUATION. MAINTAIN A CHECK OF THEIR PROGRESS. WE HAVE BEEN CORRECT IN OUR PREDICTIONS OF THEIR ACTIONS SO FAR, BUT THERE ARE INCONSISTENCIES WE ARE UNABLE TO RESOLVE.

I OBEY.

“I still keep feeling that we’re being watched.”

“A natural emotion, Lieutenant. In humans, that is.”

“You never been frightened, Mr Spock?”

“Fear is an emotion. As a Vulcan I …”

“Never as a child?”

“I know the effect of emotion. The childhood memories of them serve to maintain my control over my emotions.”

“Hm. Well, I still feel spooky, anyway. The thought of ghosts of long dead people …”

“Ghosts and poltergeists are a scientifically explained phenomenon, Lieutenant.”

“All right, Mr Spock. You tell them that. This place still gives me the creeps.”

“Spock, what do you make of this?”

Kirk was pointing to a gold cylinder sprouting from a gap in the wall above their heads. At its tip was a sphere faced with a glassy disc. Spock held his tricorder against it.

“Your suspicions of being observed appear to have been founded on fact.”

“Spock?”

“This is a television camera and audio pickup.”

EMERGENCY. SUBJECTS HAVE DISCOVERED A SURVEILLANCE DEVICE.

WHY WAS IT NOT RETRACTED AS THEY APPROACHED?

SYSTEM FAILURE, COMMANDER. I SURRENDER MYSELF TO BE PUNISHED FOR THIS MALFUNCTION.

SUBMISSION NOTED. TERMINATE THIS PHASE. SEPARATE THE SUBJECTS.

I OBEY. THIS PHASE TERMINATED. COMMENCING SEPARATION OF SUBJECTS NOW.

“Spock! The door!”

A panel rumbled into place behind them, another was dropping in front of them. Kirk leapt for the narrowing gap and thrust the floodlamp between the door and floor. There was a faint crunching noise and a groan of protesting gearing and Kirk saw the casing of the floodlamp bulge as the pressure on it increased. Mercifully, it held.

“Spock, Uhura, get through. I don’t know how long it will hold. You first, Lieutenant.”

Uhura rolled onto her back and started to edge her way under the gold slab. Her feet vanished into the other side.

“Your turn, Spock.” The lens in the flood lamp shattered and the gap narrowed a fraction. Spock was on the shining floor, his normally wiry frame encumbered by the suit. Kirk hooked his fingers under the door and, back creaking, heaved in an effort to slow the laborious progress of the door. Back and leg muscles straining, he watched as Spock’s legs vanished through the strip of light under the panel. He relinquished his struggle with the door and kneeled to follow. With the groan of overloaded motors vibrating through the floor the floodlamp casing gave way, shattering torn components across the floor and with an air of supreme finality the door thudded triumphantly into place, almost taking Spock’s fingers with it. Kirk clawed vainly at the smooth panel, as if the puny traction he could generate would be enough to reverse the movement of the impressively solid panel. Giving up in disgust, he turned to survey his new prison.

INTERESTING. AN EXAMPLE OF THE INSTINCTS OBSERVED EARLIER.

MODIFIED BY ANOTHER INSTINCT. THAT OF THE RELUCTANCE TO CONFINEMENT AGAINST THE INDIVIDUALS WISHES.

OUR OBJECTIVE WAS REACHED. WE HAVE SEPARATED THE LEADER FROM ITS TEAM.

WHAT OF THE OTHERS?

CONDUCT THEM TO CONFINEMENT CHAMBERS. PROGRESS TO THE NEXT PHASE WITH THE INDIVIDUAL.

I OBEY.

Kirk examined the status panel of his suit. The radiation outside seemed to have dropped, and, theoretically, his environment systems could have maintained his body functions indefinitely. But the suit had been subjected to stresses it should never have had to cope with. The atmosphere outside was blatantly unbreathable, and now his suit showed signs of damage. It didn’t take a logistics expert to appreciate that if he didn’t replenish the dwindling air supplies in his suit – or find a breathable atmosphere – in a few hours he’d be finished. He banished the thought to the back of his mind.

He kicked at the remains of the floodlamp, his hand resting on his phaser …. 

The phaser.

Kirk, you’re an idiot! Nothing composed of neutron based atoms could resist the effects of a phaser. He drew it and sighted along its top at the centre of the door. Before he could squeeze the trigger, it obediently slid upwards.

The corridor behind was empty. So they’ve got Spock and Uhura now. He was really on his own. He walked through into the next section of corridor, keeping a wary eye on the door should it suddenly decide to descend. The corridor was as empty and featureless as the one he’d just left. If there were any hidden panels or trapdoors they fitted well into the apparently seamless walls.

Phaser in hand, he started to walk along the corridor, wary of any movement not generated by himself. The floor trembled behind him and he spun about. The door slid back into place with a modest efficiency. He ignored it, turning to resume his journey along the corridor.

More of the eyes appeared in the walls above him. His knowledge of their purpose allowed him to ignore them. It was obviously apparent that his progress was being observed every centimetre of the way. He was feeling warm, the tingle of fear burning in the back of his mind. Not the fear of the door or the eyes. The fear of the unknown beyond the walls. The fear of some alien intelligence …

He reminded himself to stop imagining things, and concentrated on what to do next. The disappearance of Spock and Uhura would be total. He would never find them if he stayed with tactics. He contemplated burning a hole in a wall, but the knowledge that he was underground reminded him that there was a good chance that any action in that direction would merely expose a layer of solid rock. No, save the phaser charge until there was something to fire at. 

He stepped through another silver frame. As his armoured boot touched the ground there was a massive jolt of energy. He cannoned into a wall, the phaser torn from his grasp to spin to the floor in a flurry of golden sparks. He staggered across the corridor, electric arcs striking from his boots as he fought to maintain his balance. He was hammered against a wall, feeling it give way.

Amid a whirl of electricity his world blacked out. He caught a vague impression of falling, tumbling over down a smooth chute. His fingers fighting for grip, he slid and rolled further downward. Chunks of debris accompanied him, and he felt the chest pack disintegrate into a cloud of uselessly shattered components. 

Ears singing, his lungs screaming for air, he stopped rolling. Flashing lights of all colours burned around him, the salt taste of blood filled his mouth. He reached a shaking hand up to the faceplate and felt the jagged splinters still clinging to the frame.

The faceplate’s gone! No air … Can’t breathe …

His gloved fingers clawing for an emergency oxygen bottle in a backpack that was no longer there, Kirk blacked out, his body pitching face downward on a cold, unyielding floor.


	4. Chapter 4

A dull throbbing across his forehead reminded Kirk he was still alive. With an effort, he pushed himself onto his back. There was a grating sound as his weight crushed the last fragment of his backpack onto the floor. His gloves explored the shattered faceplate. It was true – he hadn’t imagined it. The visor was wide open to the planet’s atmosphere, but he was still breathing something, and that somethings was keeping him alive. He clawed at the catches on the front of the neck ring, snapping them open. With a faint cracking sound the seals parted and his helmet came away. He wished for more light. Only a faint glow somewhere above him told him he wasn’t blind.

He dropped the helmet to one side and reached for a large maser buckle under his chest pack. Twist ninety degrees to the right and hit the centre. There was a snap and the tension in the straps across his shoulders disappeared. Pushing the discarded chest pack to one side he rolled onto his left knee and stood out of the backpack – little more than the space frame and a few shards of plastic – and disconnected a pair of gas unions. He wiped the corner of his mouth on the back of his right hand. It came away glistening with a sticky brown goo. He licked the split in his lip. No teeth loose, anyway, and all the long bones seemed to be intact. He tried a couple of deep breaths, filling his lungs with the warm, sharp tasting air. No ribs broken. Seems the suit fared much worse than I did,

He took another deep breath, holding the air deep in his lungs, trying to identify the unusual scent. Something about the sharp, acrid smell …

Ozone. Three oxygen atoms linked together. Usually generated by an electrical spark. The kind of smell you get around and arc welder or faulty electrical switch gear.

But why here, when all over the planet there’s not a trace of the commoner O2? Of course, I’m still breathing straight oxygen. I wouldn’t be here wondering about it if I wasn’t, but why?

Kirk smiled to himself. All the oxygen in the world and I’m breathing it …

No. He frowned, shaking his head. Too much oxygen – getting narcosis. Too much … That’s why there’s the nitrogen. Too much oxygen overloads the brain … dilute it with N2 … dizzy …

He staggered across the black floor, one balled fist pushing against his forehead. The chest pack – emergency air cylinder … He stumbled over an unidentified piece of wreckage that pitched him headlong. He landed in an untidy heap, the chest pack fractionally out of reach. Fighting off a wave of nausea he struck out for it.

Half forgotten medical texts he’d used as a cadet floated into his consciousness … hyperventilation … overload body cells with oxygen … narcosis … unconsciousness … brain damage … dea…

For the second time in as many minutes Kirk collapsed, his hand still stretching for the chest pack.

THIS ONE SEEMS TO BE STRONGER THAN THE OTHER TWO.

YES. IT SHOULD SURVIVE MORE OF THE EXPERIMENTS. READJUST THE GAS BALANCE IN ITS HOLDING CHAMBER.

DO WE INFORM IT OF ITS PURPOSE?

IT APPEARS TO BE INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND.

ARE THE OTHERS TO BE DISPOSED OF?

NOT YET. WE MAY HAVE USE OF THEM AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL STIMULUS TO THE OTHERS. HAS CONTROL DETERMINED THE MODE OF ENERGY INTAKE FOR THE SPECIMENS?

AFFIRMATIVE.

EXCELLENT. FEED THE CONTROLS.

AND THE SUBJECT?

NO FOOD. IT HAS BEEN DISCOVERED THAT THE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL STATE KNOWN AS ‘HUNGER’ IS A POWERFUL MANIPULATIVE TOOL IN THE STUDY OF SUCH BIOLOGICAL ENTITIES. WHEN ITS BODY FUNCTIONS HAVE STABLISED, INFORM ME. THE TIME IS APPROPRIATE FOR A MEETING.

I OBEY.

Kirk blinked his eyes open. He was still wearing his EVA suit, but was now lying on his back, something soft under his head. He tried a deep breath. The tang of ozone was still there, but the lack of dizziness told him he was breathing more than neat oxygen.

Feeling as though he had a hangover with none of the benefits of acquiring one, he looked around. The same green-blue glow above him was the only source of light. He felt for the edge of whatever he was lying on with his gauntleted hands. The surface yielded slightly, as though he were lying on a large slab of foamed plastic. He swung his legs round over the right hand edge, made contact with a hard floor and, fighting off the waves of nausea, stood shakily to his feet.

Free of the deleterious effects of the concentrated oxygen atmosphere, he could concentrate on his surroundings which, at first sight, were not much to look at. He appeared to be stood in a disc of light cast by the single lamp above him. The floor was black, and apart from the low, foam topped dais he had been lying on, he was the sole occupant of the area. Beyond the ring of light was impenetrable, almost tangible, darkness. He walked round the couch. The remains of his suit and helmet had gone, along with his phaser.  
He turned, deciding to see what lay beyond the limit of the shadow. But first he’d get rid of this suit. It was useless without a helmet, and it only slowed him down. He unshipped the locking catches and shrugged the heavy suit off his shoulders. He stepped out of the boots and draped the suit over the dais.

As he started for the edge of the disc of light the ceiling glowed with energy, pouring a shadowless fluorescence into the room, revealing walls covered with banks of instruments. Telltales glowed into life, and meters and equipment powered up, until the air was filled with a wide variety of hums and ticking noises.

Blinking for a moment, Kirk glanced round himself, rooted to the spot with surprise. Then he stepped forward, his eyes caught by a bank of television monitors at the centre of one wall. Before he could take a second step, a harsh, metallic voice snapped from some hidden speaker.

STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT MOVE.

A triangular panel groaned upward below the bank of monitors. A shape, just under one and three-quarter metres tall glided noiselessly into the room. Vaguely conical in shape, the device – for it was obviously mechanical – sprouted a pair of rods at waist height, one telescoped with a hemisphere at its tip, the other short, stubby, with eight longitudinal rods grouped round it. Kirk would have laid bets that the latter was a weapon of some kind.

The top of the device was a turret, into which were set a pair of lamp assemblies. Growing between these was a third stick, ending in a similar type of bulb he had seen in the cameras found in the corridors earlier. Very neat, mused Kirk. Manipulator stick, gun stick, and eye stick. The machine spoke.

IDENTIFY YOURSELF.

Kirk was taken off guard at being asked to identify himself to a robot. Swallowing his pride, he answered.

“James T. Kirk, Captain of the Federation …”

IT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE.

“Now just a minute …” He advanced a pace. The eye stick swivelled to face him squarely, the gun stick following suit.

YOU WERE ORDERED TO REMAIN THERE.

“I don’t intend to be pushed around …”

SILENCE. YOU WILL DO AS COMMANDED.

Kirk felt his hackles rise. Alien civilisation or no, he felt that now was not exactly the time for diplomacy.

“You have four of my crew imprisoned down here. I demand …”

YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO DEMAND ANYTHING.

“If my crew or myself do not report back to my ship they’ll start blowing holes in this planet until they find us.”

YOUR SHIP IS IN NO POSITION TO AID YOU. SEE.

A monitor, formerly a random jumble of coloured dots, resolved into a coherent picture. An image of the Enterprise appeared, surrounded by a yellow-green haze of energy.

“If you do anything to my ship …”

THE FORCE FIELD IS SUFFICIENT TO PREVENT SENSOR PROBING AND RADIO COMMUNICATION. YOUR SHIP CANNOT FIRE ANY WEAPONRY WITHOUT SEVERELY DAMAGING ITSELF.

Kirk was about to make a retort at that when three more of the robots appeared. Where the first was a silvery blue, these were red. Without comment they broke formation and huddled – if that is the term – over different banks of instruments. Kirk was about to speak again when the door panel groaned open again.

Standing for a moment, framed dramatically in the back glow of the room beyond, was yet another of the machines. It glided forward, oozing power from its gloss black flanks. Around its lower section, hemispherical projections shone gold and silver. Kirk was impressed. Apparently this was a leader among the robots. It spoke.

THIS IS THE SUBJECT?

The silver-blue robot half turned and scurried forward to meet it.

AFFIRMATIVE.

THE OTHERS?

ASSIGNED TO THEIR RESTRAINT CHAMBERS.

EXCELLENT.

“I am still waiting for a representative of your race.” Both robots aimed their eye sticks at him.

THE SUBJECT SPEAKS.

YES, COMMANDER.

IT UNDERSTANDS US?

APPARENTLY, COMMANDER.

ANY PARTICULAR OBSERVATIONS TO NOTE?

TYPICAL THREAT REACTION ON THE DISCOVERY IT NO LONGER WEILDS POWER OVER US.

INTERESTING.

THE SUBJECT IS RESPONSIVE, BUT VULNERABLE, ALMOST BEYOND ITS OWN APPRECIATION OF THE FACT.

The black robot looked across at a bank of monitors, the blue robot followed its gaze. Kirk started forward.

“Now, just you look here …” As his left foot left the still visible ring of light on the floor a jolt of power arced between it and the boot. There was a minor thunderclap and Kirk found himself flat on his back beside the dais, a tang of ozone and singed plastic in his nostrils. The black robot turned an impassive eye toward him and, addressing no one in particular, intoned:

A HIGH TENSION ELECTRICAL FIELD IS A MOST USEFUL TOOL IN THE CONTROL OF SUCH LIFEFORMS.

AGREED, COMMANDER.

A red robot scuttled past, ignoring Kirk, and held a luminescent plate up to the eyestick of the blue robot. The turret turned to the black robot.

THE ALIEN SHIP IS SECURE. THE ATMPSHERE CRAFT IS IN OUR MAIN HOLDING STORE IN THE GREEN SECTOR. THE OTHER LIFE FORMS ARE BEING AFFORDED NOURISHMENT AT THIS TIME.

EXCELLENT.

Kirk shook his head in a vain attempt to clear the fuzz from his thought processors. His ears pricked at the mention of ‘other life forms.” He staggered drunkenly to his feet.

“You said other life forms. My crew?”

“HIS” CREW. POSSESSION? SLAVERY?

DOUBTFUL COMMANDER. SUCH A HIGH STATE OF TRAINING IS NOT USUALLY AFFORDED TO MENIALS.

AGREED.

“Now, hold on a minute. I’m not some laboratory rat you can examine at will. I demand …”

The black robot glanced at him for a moment, then turned to the other.

AGAIN THE THREAT. AN IMPERATIVE WITHOUT MEANS TO SUPPORT IT. MOST INTERESTING.

YES, COMMANDER.

Kirk looked round, searching vainly for a weapon. He’d make them take more notice of him …

ATTENTION, ALIEN.

He froze. Slowly he turned to eye the blue robot.

THE COMMANDER WISHES TO CONVERSE.

“I’m not stopping him.”

AGAIN THE LATENT THREAT.

ENOUGH!

I OBEY, COMMANDER.

ALIEN. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF US?

Kirk almost spoke without thinking. Choking back the impulse, he walked round the dais, giving him time to think. Resting one foot on the foam plastic, he leaned on the knee. He stared the black robot in the eye, putting what he hoped was a confident expression on his face.

“I would rather make that point to the ruling life on this planet.” He allowed the friendly expression to slip a little, setting his jaw. “I don’t normally conduct my business through robot servants.”

There was an ominous silence. The black robot locked solid, apparently digesting these facts. Finally, it spoke.

WE ARE NOT ROBOT SERVANTS.

Now it was Kirk’s turn to be silent.

WE ARE THE RULING LIFE FORM ON THIS PLANET.

Kirk was conscious of three red and one blue eye sticks centred on him.

WE ARE THE DALEKS.

Kirk felt his jaw drop open in surprise. “But … that’s impossible.”

YOU DOUBT WHAT YOU SEE?

“But …” He frowned, making an effort to think rationally. “Daleks are a figment of someone’s imagination. Old Earth science fiction …”

AH, EARTH. SO IT IS CONFIRMED. YOU ARE INDEED OF THAT PLANET.

He contemplated the machine for a moment, at once wishing it had some features he could recognise as a face – some way he could read an expression. The metal and plastic device stared immovably back.

“You know Earth?”

BACK IN OUR PRE-HISTORY, OUR ANCESTRAL CIVILISATION VISITED EARTH. MANY CENTURIES AGO.

“There have been no records …”

YOUR PLANET WAS PRIMITIVE. A SIMPLE, NON MECHANICAL WORLD. OUR INVASION FLEET WAS TO HAVE LITTLE DIFFICULTY IN ITS CONQUEST.

“Conquest? Obviously it didn’t succeed.”

ITS SUCCESS WAS PARTIAL. CERTAIN OBJECTIVES WERE ACHIEVED.

“Then why isn’t Earth still a Dalek colony?”

YOU SEE THE REASON BEFORE YOU.

“I don’t …”

AT THE TIME OF THE INVASION THE DALEK WAS AS HUMANOID AS YOU. THE SAME PHENOMENON THAT DESTROYED THE SURFACE OF OUR PLANET ALTERED THE DALEK TO ITS PRESENT SUPERIOR FORM.

“Superior? But these cases … you’re not purely robots?”

THAT IS CORRECT. WE ARE THE DALEKS. THIS IS THE ULTIMATE EVOLUTIONARY STATE, A PROCESS ACCELERATED BY THE BOMBS. WE ARE PURE MIND. WE ARE SUPREME INTELLIGENCE. WE ARE THE DALEKS.

Kirk straightened. So Daleks do exist. Born in the mind of some forgotten writer centuries before and stemming from ancient racial memories. The real Daleks had existed for eons before – and over the years had stewed in their own megalomaniac juices. Spock would have found this fascinating – McCoy, too. A paranoid robot civilisation.

“What do you propose to do with us now?”

YOU ARE AN EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECT. YOUR AUDIENCE IS TERMINATED.

“What of my crew? And my ship?”

THAT SHOULD BE OF LITTLE CONCERN TO YOU.

DO WE PROGRESS TO THE NEXT STAGE?

AFFIRMATIVE. SUBJECT HAS BEEN ACQUAINTED WITH OUT CIVILISATION TO THE EXTENT THAT IT CAN FORM ITS OWN RATIONALISATIONS.

SO NOTED.

Kirk was beginning to feel like a laboratory rat again. “Dalek!”

The black eye stick slowly rotated to aim at him. Kirk was suddenly struck by a feeling of profound impatience on the robot’s part.

I AM WAITING, ALIEN.

Thinking fast, Kirk tried another tact. “Do you acknowledge us to be an intelligent species?”

BASIC INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT PROCESSES ARE IN EVIDENCE.

Oh, oh! This was going to be more difficult than he thought. He didn’t like the ‘basic’ bit at all. Still, it’s a bit too late to alter things now …

“Therefore, as an intelligent species, do we not have rights as such a species?”

NON SEQUITER. INTELLIGENCE COULD BE PROVEN IN THE MOST BASIC OF LIFE FORMS. YOUR HISTORY IS FILLED WITH EXAMPLES OF YOUR INDIFFERENCE TO EVEN COMPLEX INTELLIGENCE.

“But that is history. Humanity has progressed beyond that …”

YOU STILL BREED LABORATORY RATS FOR BASIC RESEARCH?

Strike one. Kirk paused, desperately trying to think around it.

PLANET BORN HUMANOIDS STILL REAR FOOD ANIMALS?

Strike two. He opened his mouth to speak …

HUMANOID STILL TERMINATES THE LIFE FORCE OF HUMANOID? PLANETARY SYSTEM STILL CONFRONTS PLANETARY SYSTEM? CIVILISATION STILL THREATENS CIVILISATION?

Strike three, and you’re out. Kirk's defense collapsed. He was ashamed for his race.

THE AUDIENCE IS TER…

“Hold it! Wait a moment. All right, I admit out civilisation made a mistake.”

THE ERRORS APPEAR TO BE MANY.

“I don’t pretend that it is perfect. But we’re learning. Slowly, I admit. But we are progressing. And as a civilisation I demand we be treated as such …

UNSUBSTANTIATED THREAT PATTERN.

“Cut that out, will you? I refuse to be a …”

YOU HAVE LITTLE CHOICE IN THE MATTER. PROGRESS TO NEXT STAGE.

Kirk took a pace forward, ignoring the possibility of yet another electric shock. “Have you never made a mistake, in all your history?”

There was a significant pause. The blue Dalek frozen, its eye locked on the puny animal that dared question its might. The black Dalek slid smoothly forward.

A CIVILISATION OF SUPREME INTELLIGENCE IS INCAPABLE OF ERROR. THEREFORE WE ARE INCAPABLE OF ERROR. WE ARE THE DALEKS. WE ARE SUPREME. WE ARE THE DALEKS.

Kirk felt the hairs on the back of his next rise. Sweat stained the palms of his hands. For the first time in many years he tasted real fear. The Daleks had the upper hand and knew it. On top of that they were totally ruthless. He remained silent. The black Dalek rotated slowly and drifted silently towards the triangular section in the wall. It cranked open at the robot’s approach and dropped back into place behind it with a solid thud. Indeed, the audience was over.

The blue Dalek, supreme now the black Dalek had departed, approached the dais.

YOU WILL FOLLOW ME. MOVE.

Kirk was about to resist when one of the red Daleks turned their gun stick on him. Bowing to superior forces, he decided to co-operate. For the time being.

Blue Dalek set off for a wall opposite the monitors, a panel lifting out of its way by magic at its approach. Kirk fell into step behind it, the red Dalek following him at a discrete distance.

He took the opportunity to assimilate what he had learned until now. Fact: the Daleks existed, if anything more ruthless than fiction had painted them. Fact: they were mechanisms, drawing power from an as yet unknown source. Fact: inside the mechanisms was a life form, either a surgically modified brain, or a genetically mutated form of humanoid. Either way, without the metal shell, it was vulnerable. So …

HALT. WAIT HERE ALIEN.

The convoy stopped. Kirk glanced around. The red Dalek was along the corridor behind him, apparently operating some instrument. Blue Dalek was at a similar control panel in front of him, its ‘back’ to him. Automatically he was forming plans of escape. A sudden thought froze him where he was.

Everything he had done had been anticipated by the Daleks. Planned, considered carefully every millimetre of the way. He addressed the box in front of him.

“Dalek.”

The turret revolved. The body, turning slower, followed it round.

YES, ALIEN.

“Any decision to escape will be mine, and mine alone.”

The box gave a little backwards-forwards movement.

YOU … FOLLOW ME ALIEN. RED TWO, ATTEND.

The red Dalek scuttled after them. Kirk smiled to himself. For the first time since entering the city had had the impression of scoring a point over the robots. But a point was not a game, and the game was far from over.

The journey seemed to last for an eternity. They appeared to be the only occupants of the long, echoing corridors. Kirk was beginning to wonder if they were the only occupants of the whole planet. Could it be that this system was nothing more than a glorified rat’s maze in some insane laboratory, sealed off from the rest of the city least he contaminate it?

Looking over the top of the leading Dalek, he suddenly saw the corridor disappear. The Dalek paid no heed to this and continued out into space. Suspended, the robot glided on like a participant in a crazy aerial ballet. Kirk approached the edge of the corridor. Below – some distance below – stretched and incredible sight. Complex towers and structures, connected by delicate bridges, glowing silver and gold in the sunlight …

Sunlight?

He glanced upwards. The ‘sun’ was a massive disk of light, burning with the same soft luminescence of the corridors. Around it stretched brown sandstone rock, carved by unknown machinery. Kirk was impressed, trying to visualise the amount of stone removed. A hemispherical sucker prodded him in the back. The blue Dalek, still apparently suspended on thin air, turned imperiously.

MOVE. THE SUPPORT IS SOLID.

“It’s not the floor I’m worried about. The city …”

AN ACHEIVEMENT CONGRUENT TO THE SUPREME INTELLECT OF THE DALEK RACE.

Hmm. Nothing like waving your own flag. Kirk took a tentative step onto – well, it looked like nothing. It held firm as plate titanium alloy. Something about it made him bend down to examine it. The red Dalek almost ran him down. The blue Dalek advanced menacingly.

MOVE, ALIEN. OR I DESTROY YOU HERE.

Kirk obediently stood up. He’d seen all he wanted to see. Fine silver wires – platinum as a guess – set into the plastic of the floor. Invisible beyond a metre or so. Another fact to slot into the increasingly complex jigsaw of the problem.

They continued into another structure opposite the one they had just left. The nagging voice at the back of Kirk’s consciousness urging him to attempt an escape; another voice, one of logic, told him to resist the temptation. A moment had to be chosen such that the choice was all his, and not partly by the Daleks themselves. They were passing windows now, the city spread out to their right like a fine architect’s model. Kirk examined it with interest. A whole city, buried deep enough under the planet’s crust to avoid sensor probing. The radiation had been a help, of course …

Wait a minute. What had Uhura said? Interference appears when a way is found past it. Do the Daleks have control over radiation? An interesting thought. Radiation – and why the use of electricity? The air was full of ozone, the electrified floors instead of force fields. Surely a race as sophisticated as the Daleks could devise more efficient systems. Those that consume much less power are more efficient.

Still, if the Daleks have power to waste …

No, that wasn’t the answer. There’s something about the basic concept of the Dalek. Something he had missed.

He found his gaze wandering along a crack in a transparent panel. Realisation hit him like a phaser bolt. A crack. The panel is brittle. But how brittle? A wild scheme began to form in his mind. He looked beyond the panel. An impressive drop to the hard city floor below stared back. If he could only move fast enough …

He slowed, searching through the idea for any fault. True, it was risky, but it had the advantage of being a totally surprise move. He waited until they had reached a split in the corridor. To the right was the window, to the left, a short corridor leading to a series of ramps. Enough to lose himself long enough to plan the next move. The blue Dalek had drifted further in front of him. He sensed the red Dalek behind him. The sucker stick hit his back again.

Without warning he spun round and grabbed the sucker stick. Surprised, the Dalek was coasting, its base motors unpowered. He leaned back, praying for a grip on the golden floor. The Dalek began to roll forward, accelerating as he pulled. A grating noise began to pipe from the turret, the two lamps either side of the eyestick pulsing in time with each new syllable.

HELP. HELP. THIS UNIT UNDER ATTACK. HELP ME HELP ME. UNDER ATTACK UNDER ATTACK.

The casing accelerated across the floor, turning in a lazy arc, Kirk at the centre hanging on for grim death to the sucker stick. With a final heave he released the machine, to watch it glide across the floor to cannon into the titanium frame around the transparent panel. The blue Dalek, baulked by the narrow confines of the corridor, was having trouble turning around. The turret lined up on Kirk just as the red Dalek, still screaming for assistance in its plaintive electronic voice, connected with the panel, pushing it outwards in a haze of crystalline fragments.

HELP ME HELP MEHELPMEHELPME UNDERATTACKUNDERATTACKUNDERAAAGH …

The casing, surrounded by the halo of glistening glass, plummeted earthward. Kirk ignored its departure, concentrating on the blue Dalek ahead. It had succeeded in turning round, and was aiming its gun stick at him.

Toes clawing for traction, he dived for the gap in the wall. The singsong voice of the Dalek carried to him as a sudden blast or air threatened to bowl him over.  
EMERGENCY EMERGENCY. SUBJECT HAS MADE A NON-SCHEDULED ESCAPE ATTEMPT. ALL SECURITY DALEKS REPORT TO MASTER CONTROL. GASTIGHT INTEGRITY OF LEVEL THREE BREACHED. REPAIR TEAMS REPORT TO ME. REPAIR TEAMS REPORT TO ME.

The window! Open to the city – at a different pressure to this section. Too late to do anything about it now. He hoped he could find and air supply before his atmosphere exhausted out into the rest of the city.

He hit the ramp running as fast as he could. Sounds of movement echoed up, filtering from the lower layers. Skidding to a halt, he glanced desperately around him, feeling the oxygen content of the air dropping even as he thought about it. The rumbling sound of a door closing came over singing ears, burning into his oxygen starved brain.  
Muscles in his legs complaining, he dived for the source of the sound. Descending at an alarming rate, the gold panel gleamed invitingly from the other end of the short corridor. With a last desperate effort he struck out for the narrowing gap. Arms wrapped protectively about his head, he snap-rolled under the door, to land gasping for breath on the other side. With a hollow boom, the door slammed into place.

Kirk stayed on his back for a few glorious moments, drawing fresh air deeply into his aching lungs and allowing his racing heart to settle down. No matter if it were tainted with ozone and a dozen plastic smells, it was like nectar after the chocking mixture he’d had to contend with earlier.

He rolled onto his side and stood up. A quick check along the walls showed no apparent surveillance devices. Kirk put his ear to the golden panel that a few moments before had threatened to finish the job the Daleks seemed intent on performing. No sounds, save the light humming of unidentifiable equipment, penetrated from beyond.

He turned. Since he couldn’t get that way, he had to go in this direction. Another, reassuring glance at the wall, and he started on a precise, easy walk along the corridor. Ever ready for intrusion, he started work on the problem again.

The main city has a different atmosphere to this section, at a different pressure. So, it’s logical to assume that if Spock and the others are still alive they’ll be somewhere in this complex. Sounds reasonable, he thought. Yet if the rest of the city is built to the same permanence as this section, then it would be logical to assume that the whole city is capable of being pressurised with a breathable atmosphere – the door shut as tight as an airlock, yet by making a simple overlap seal air pressure alone would have done the job. More design anomalies. The mechanisms were restricted to flat floors and gentle ramps. True city robots. Perhaps they were never designed to go onto the surface.

I need to talk to Spock. Get a fresh mind on the subject.

He suddenly realised he was hungry. What had the black Dalek said about feeding his subjects? Food for the others, but not him? Psyco-physiological tool?

Well, here’s where the specimens start to fight back. He wished for a weapon of some kind. You can’t fight a machine with fists, no matter how strong the provocation.  
A crossover appeared ahead. He slowed his pace, approaching on tiptoe. Leaning against one wall, he eased round the corner, ready to duck back if anything was there. He flattened against the wall. There was something there. Another blue Dalek, a pair of red Daleks in tow, advancing along the corridor. He squeezed himself into the corner between golden wall and silver frame.

The blue box slid past. A pause, then the first of the red machines, bearing a white plastic tray laden with rectangular grey boxes. The second bore a similar load, supplemented with a grey topped cylinder. The second red Dalek passed the junction – then stoppe. Kirk froze, conscious of his loudly thudding heart. The familiar electronic monotone carried along the still corridor.

NOURISHMENT FOR THE ALIENS?

AFFIRMATIVE.

SECURITY REPORTS THAT THE ALIEN ESCAPED FROM ITS ESCORT.

AFFIRMATIVE. CENTRAL COMMAND INDICATES THE POSSIBILITY OF ITS SUCCESS IN REACHING LEVEL FIVE IS FACTOR DECIMAL FIVE ZERO THREE.  
AFFIRMATIVE. SEARCH OF THIS LEVEL HAS COMMENCED.

Kirk suddenly wondered why there were no wall monitors in the section. Had he managed to penetrate a section not normally used to monitor such alien life forms?  
He risked a glance round the frame. A Dalek, black with orange turret and skirt hemispheres, was in conversation with the bleu Dalek. A security guard, perhaps?

ATTEND TO THE PRISONERS.

I OBEY.

THIS UNIT COMMENCE SEARCH PATTERN.

Kirk backed into the corridor and dodged to the other side as the black and orange Dalek scuttled past the others. Hardly daring to breathe, he waited as it drew level with the intersection. It paused, glanced along Kirk’s corridor, then turned in the opposite direction. Kirk heaved a silent sigh of relief and risked another glance around after the departing blue and reds. An icy claw of fear touched his heart as he almost came face to face with blue, its eyestick slowly scanning the wall on its far side. He crushed back into the narrow recess as, trailing the familiar scent of ozone, blue turned into the opposite corridor to follow black and orange.

Forcing his adrenaline charged muscles to relax, Kirk risked another look along the corridor. The two red Daleks had stopped as a door panel slid open. One entered the compartment beyond, the second turned to proceed further down the corridor. 

Catlike, Kirk stepped into the corridor. The golden panel dropped behind the first red, the second stopping before another panel. Kirk saw it nudge a coloured disc at the side of the door at sucker height. The panel retracted into the frame above, and the Dalek entered. As the door was closing he dodged under it. Before he could take in the scene the Dalek rammed backwards, crushing him against the closing panel. Something dark covered his head and there was a sharp blow that exploded a firework display across the back of his eyes. His last conscious memory was a distorted Dalek voice, dying to a run down gurgle:

UNDER ATTACK UNDER ATTAAA …


	5. Chapter 5

“Here, Jim. Take a drink of this.”

Something cold, wet and bitter burned down the back of his throat. Kirk’s eyes snapped open, and he struggled for a moment, reliving the last few moments of consciousness.

McCoy’s concerned face drifted into focus.

“Bones? What ..?” Looking past his medical officer’s shoulder he could see Hansa kneeling over the upturned Dalek casing. He turned and smiled.

“Good to see you, Captain.”

Kirk eased himself into a sitting position, waving away the carafe of water offered by McCoy.

“How long was I out? And what happened to the Dalek?”

“A few minutes, Jim. Dalek, eh? So that’s what it is. Looks as though Spock might just have a point about such a thing as a robot civilisation.”

“I don’t think so.” Hansa straightened and pointed at a broken seam below the turret. “It isn’t really a robot.”

McCoy’s eyebrows danced across his forehead with surprise. “Not a robot?”

“Explain, Lieutenant,” said Kirk, standing and striding across the narrow cell.

“Well, it’s a mechanical casing all right, with power supplies to electric and hydro-pneumatic motors. But it isn’t controlled by a cybernetic unit.”

“Then what..?” began McCoy.

“If you’ll pardon the cliché, it’s not a pretty sight.”

Despite his many years of experience with extra-terrestial life forms, and prepared as he was for some shock, even Kirk was unprepared for what he saw. Hansa pulled the turret away from its bearings in the top of the casing, exposing a capsule lined with electrodes. In the dark recesses of the capsule was an indescribable black horror. Kirk caught a brief impression of distorted arms and claws before he couldn’t stand the sight any longer. McCoy, a ‘my God’ frozen on his lips, turned away. Only Hansa seemed unmoved. Kirk turned to face his as the quiet click told him the turret was closed once more.

“You’ve seen that before?”

“I’ve seen similar. Radiation mutation. Looks like several hundred generations too. No wonder they built these casings.”

Kirk contemplated the Dalek. “How did you turn it off?”

“We pushed it over to try and immobilise it. The thing just stopped as it was lifted off the floor – voice circuits, movement, weaponry, the lot.”

Kirk glanced at the door. Hansa spoke before he could ask the question.

“I think I can get the door open again. But I don’t know if this thing was in contact with anybody when we silenced it.”

“Well, we can’t stay here much longer. This thing will be missed soon.” He knelt beside the casing, examining under the base. “I wonder …” He stood, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You’ve no idea where Spock and Uhura are?”

“No, Jim. But I would have thought they would be kept …”

“Captain!”

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Doors opening nearby. I can feel the vibration through the floor.”

“Get that door open. They might not have found out about this Dalek, but I’m not willing to take the chance.”

Hansa pushed against the smooth surface of the door. There was the grating sound of broken gear trains, and the door slide reluctantly upwards. Kirk dodged under the half open door, glancing either way along the corridor. Beckoning to the others to follow, he padded lightly to the first intersection. There was an electronic whine and the door in the passage to the left slid upwards, revealing a pair of blue Daleks, led by the black and orange Dalek. Kirk pointed the other way and, taking on glance backward, set off after the others. The floor dipped, and began a gentle curve left. The cross several intersections, travelling in silence. Suddenly, on instinct, Kirk turned at the next intersection, to skid to a stop after a few metres, before a heavy door.

McCoy pulled up beside him. “What now, Jim?”

“I think … Yes … the place looks familiar. If we can get to a central control room we may buy ourselves some time. The Enterprise will be wondering what’s happening down here soon. All we have to do is keep out of trouble long enough for Scotty to find us.”

He studied the door for a few precious seconds. A symbol, in green paint, was placed just above its centre. Green. Something stirred in his memory. Something one of the Daleks had said about the shuttlecraft …

“How do we open the door?”

McCoy’s laconic voice gained his attention. He frowned for a moment, then: “I saw one of the Daleks touch a coloured panel before a door opened. Perhaps …” He scanned the panel around the frame. “Aha! What have we here?”

A raised disc that yielded under the pressure of a finger had been set into the wall at chest height. There was a faint clicking of metal rods, followed by a powerful hum. With a slight hiss of escaping air the heavy door swung in and up, revealing a dimmed out room beyond. Although all they could see was a patch of golden floor, there was an overwhelming impression of there being a vast space beyond. Kirk shot a glance at the door and stepped under it. As he stepped onto the floor of the larger room he was blinded by a curtain of yellow light.

As he blinked his eyes became accustomed to the light and he began to make out the contents of the room.

“Well, if that isn’t a sight for sore eyes.” He was conscious of McCoy standing beside him, but his attention was on the centre of the vast room.

Standing on a metal transport frame was the shuttlecraft Magellan, of the Starship, USS Enterprise.

Kirk inhaled deeply, fighting to control the feeling of elation and the adrenaline-charged pulse of his heart. He took a step forward, the invitingly serene shape of the shuttle sitting in the golden haze. A sudden chilling thought lanced through his consciousness: what if this was a trap? A golden mousetrap with the Magellan as the cheese.

With a curt wave of one hand he indicated the others to wait on their side of the hatchway. Stabbing an abrupt glance on either side of him, Kirk advanced, one brisk, purposeful step after another, on the little spacecraft.

Every sense alert for the keening wail of an alarm, or the warning rumble of Dalek machinery vibrating through the floor, he approached the white shuttlecraft. Thankfully, almost reverently, he patted its cool flanks, as if reassuring himself it was more than a mere illusion of his emotionally battered mind. He nodded, a grim smile cracking his face.

He half turned to beckon McCoy and Hansa to follow, then thumbed the door operating switch. The three plates whispered softly into the hull, and Kirk stepped lightly aboard.

“See if you can rustle us up some coffee, Lieutenant.” Kirk cast a professional eye over the still gleaming status panels of the ship. He turned to face his chief medical officer. “Bones, have you any idea where Spock and Uhura are being held?”

McCoy leaned against the equipment locker beside the rear bulkhead of the cabin, clipping the fresh medikit he had just removed from it onto his belt.

“No, Jim. And I can’t even begin to guess, either. This place is worse than a rabbit warren. In fact …” He paused, nodding his thanks to Hansa as he took the bulb of hot coffee. “I’m more than a little surprised we found the shuttle like this.”

Kirk thoughtfully sipped his coffee. De-caffeinated ersatz stuff that it was, its stimulative effect was none the less potent. “Umm. Yes, I see what you mean.” He set the drink down on the flight console and eased himself into the right hand seat, normally occupied by his co-pilot, in this case Spock. Jabbing buttons on the sensor array, he reached out electronic fingers to probe the golden cavern holding the shuttle. A puzzled frown creased his forehead.

“Hmm. According to this there’s free space beyond the wall in front of us, onto the planet’s surface. I read the same atmosphere we passed through on landing, and unshielded cosmic radiation.” He adjusted controls, peering intently into the display screen. “To quote our esteemed First Officer, ‘most interesting.’ Look.”

He tapped the screen with his forefinger. Over his shoulder, McCoy gave a low whistle. Hansa, a concerned, thoughtful expression on his face, spoke:

“But according to this, that wall’s only half the thickness of the other hatched we’ve been through …”

“Precisely. And it scans out with a much lower material strength. We could punch through with the shuttle and not even scratch the paintwork.”

Something didn’t sit right. Irritably, Kirk hammered a control, and the display screen dimmed. He turned in the seat to face the others.

“Almost seems as if the Daleks have finished with us,” mused McCoy, contemplating the cooling, half-finished container of coffee in his right hand. “Showing us the door, so to speak.”

“And expecting us to walk out and leave Spock and Uhura behind.” Kirk’s jaw set. “Mr Hansa. Break out the spare E.V.A suit. It’s about time I had a word or two with these tincan dictators – on my own terms.” He swung back to the console, apparently oblivious to McCoy’s sudden concerned frown. He touched more controls and there was a faint hiss of static as the communication desk fired into life. “But first, I think a call to the ‘Enterprise’ is on order. They must be getting a little concerned about us by now.”

After several attempts, the fluting whine of the starship’s carrier signals filled the cabin. A careful adjustment here and there, and then he spoke:

“Magellan calling Enterprise. Kirk to Enterprise.”

“Magellan from Enterprise. Reading you on strength two by three, Captain, but great to hear from you.”

“The feeling, as they say, Scotty is mutual. Can you lock sensors onto the Magellan, or locate Mr Spock or Uhura?”

Scotty’s brogue stiffened slightly. “We’re having difficulty keeping station on the planet, Captain, let alone anything on it. Something’s fouling up all our electronics, including the force field generators. It’s all we can do to maintain a stable orbit.”

“First hint of real trouble and you get my ship out of there, Mr Scott. Warp out to extreme shuttle craft range and wait for my call. We’ll take care of everything down here. Stick with it, Scotty. Kirk out.”

The communications panel dimmed as he killed the circuits. He turned, rising from his seat, only to be confronted by McCoy, wearing a penetrating stare.

“And what do you think you, one man, in one E.V.A. suit with no backpack can do against an army of paranoid, mechanised pepper pots?”

Kirk opened his mouth to speak. Hansa interrupted him.

“All the suits are here, Sir. And all the undamaged equipment but the phasers. It all checks out …”

“Good.” Kirk stepped past the still sombre faced McCoy and reached for the nearest suit. “I’ll want a complete unit for myself, plus one each for Mr Spock and Lieutenant Uhura.”

McCoy stood at his shoulder. “That still leaves one complete suit. I could …”

“I’m going on my own, Bones. Stay with the ship.” He snapped the helmet neck lock rings and ran his fingers over the umbilical lines connecting the suit to its backpack. “Lt. Hansa, get into the other suit. Check that outer wall. When I’ve gone, jam the door so it can’t close.” He hefted two other suit packs and half turned towards the hatchway, his eyes catching McCoy’s for a significant fraction of a second. “And Hansa …”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Don’t let Doctor McCoy try to follow me. That is an order.”

McCoy glared at him as Hansa nodded his acknowledgement of the command. He snapped the inner, transparent helmet visor shut, then reach clumsily gloved fingers to the gold plated glare visor, closing it over the grim smile on his face. Satisfied his suit was performing satisfactorily, he stepped through the opening hatchway onto the gleaming floor. He strode stiffly to the alien doorway, then paused on the threshold and turned to see an already suited Hansa step off the access platform, revealing Enterprise’s medical officer in the black hexagon of the shuttlecraft hatch.

Kirk took one last glance at the scene, turned his back on the fuming McCoy, and strode determinedly along the golden corridor in search of his missing crewmen.

* * *

He walked for several interminably long minutes to the sound of his own breathing, punctuating the urgent hissing of his helmet air supply hoses and the hollow, echoing beat of his footsteps in the corridor.

He reached an intersection, pausing momentarily to unsling the tricorder from his right shoulder. Opening the top, he cast a critical eye over the tiny viewing screen, waiting to allow the little unit’s electronic brain to absorb more useful information, and to process it into meaningful display. Gradually, a recognisable array of coloured bands drifted into place on the screen. He nodded, a triumphant smile spreading across his face. He closed the black box with a firm click, retrieved the suits and continued along the corridor.

He stopped before yet another door. A simple white, horizontal stripe of paint glared back at him from the golden panel. He pushed a fisted gauntlet into the operating switch and stepped back as the door edged upwards.

There was a moment of instinctive caution as he paused on the threshold. He was frowning now, marshalling and channelling his emotions to one of hate and utter contempt for the race of robots that dared try and imprison him or his crew. Eyes burning like the cold fire of diamonds behind the plexiglass visor, he took three, carefully precise steps forward.

The room was sterile, hospital white. Banks of gleaming circuitry boxes and cases of scientific equipment formed rigid, formal rows across the floor. In the charged silence the closing of the door behind him was as a roll of thunder.

He glanced quickly about himself, eyes lighting on a rack of glistening tools. He hefted the largest he found, a long rod of some silvery material machined at either end into intricate shapes. He placed the suits against the tool rack and, thus armed, stepped cautiously between cases of equipment towards the rear of the room.

There was the metallic rumble of a door opening, and a panel in the wall before him slid upwards, revealing an ebony cavern beyond. He flattened against the wall as a white Dalek glided into the room. The vibrations of the door closing excited the nerves in the fingertips of his left hand pressed against the wall as he concentrated on the back of the machine. His right hand tightened around the alloy bar.

“Dalek!” The single word, rasping from the speaker on his chestpack, was crisp in the cool, still air of the chamber. The white robot stopped dead, then, slowly, reluctantly, the device rotated on its floor casters, the eyestick centering on the middle of his faceplate.

“Where are the rest of my crew, Dalek?”

The mechanism wavered for a moment. Kirk suddenly noticed it had no weapon stick, or even a conventional sucker stick. From each socket in its mid-section sprouted a multiple-jointed arm, terminating in a delicate manipulative device. It spoke.

I AM NOT PROGRAMMED …

Kirk was on the verge of losing control of his temper. He advanced on the Dalek, the bar lifted menacingly. “Then I suggest you do a little re-programming.” He swung the bar towards the Dalek, white points of light striking from its entire length. “For the last time. Where are my crew?”

I … NOT PROGRAMMED … EMERGENCY EMERGENCY. HUMAN IN SECTION …

The Dalek was never destined to finish the message. With all his adrenaline charged might, he swung the bar in a glittering arc to connect with the upper section of the casing just below the turret. The bar scythed into the cowling, silencing the voice in a shower of burning fragements of metal and plastic. The rest of the machine, still under motive power, jerked across the floor, demolishing a bank of electronics.

Dodging the flames sputtering from the wreckage, Kirk retrieved the alloy bar and padded softly to the inner door. The door lifted obediently at his approach and he stepped through, his stride unchecked.

Again his senses were shocked by a complete reversal of the appearance of this chamber from the last. Here was the impression of haunting evil, the blackness making the room appear to be a vast, limitless cavern. Pushing up his glare screen, he took in the mind wrenching sight of fantastic and totally alien machinery. Huddled over the apparatus glowing with unearthly green and blue lights were two more white Daleks. Yet dominating the room was a massive cage. Apparently fashioned of crystal and supported on a convoluted framework, wires and cables connecting it to unseen devices deeper in the chamber. Abruptly, the centre of Kirk’s attention was the occupant of the tank – his communications officer, Lt. Uhura, her tired and bedraggled face lit with hope at his appearance.

“Back against the far wall, Lieutenant!” Kirk’s electronically amplified voice boomed across the chamber, echoing back from the unseen walls beyond the shadows. Two Dalek eyestalks spun towards him as he heaved the bar with all his might at the faceted cage. The bar sliced into the panel, the crystal dissolving into a thousand glittering fragments. Uhura appeared from behind the shimmering curtain of wreckage, shaking light catching shards of crystal from her hair and clothing.

“Suit back there,” Kirk rasped curtly, jabbing a thumb through the doorway. “Take the tricorder. Try and find Spock.”

She nodded, ducking under the doorframe as he turned back to the two Daleks, standing stunned into silence and immobility by the suddenness of his attack.

“One of your colleagues refused to answer one of my questions. He’s out there.” He aimed a gauntleted finger in the direction of the doorway. The dancing light of fire glinted ominously beyond the doorframe. “Now, are you going to be more cooperative, or do I have to start ..?”

The booming tones of a loudspeaker spun him round, knees flexed in an instinctive judo crouch. The brutally metallic voice flooded the air.

ATTENTION ALL UNITS. NON COORDINATED HUMANS IN UPPER LEVELS. SEARCH PATTERNS ARE IN EFFECT. EXPERIMENTAL SCHEDULES TO BE ABANDONED AND HUMANS TO BE ELIMINATED. ATTENTION ALL UNITS …

One of the white Daleks had turned, kirk assumed to a communications console. He wheeled, muscles tensing for action. The nearest Dalek was beginning to drift towards him, articulated arms twitching uncertainly. Kirk took a pace forward to meet it. Simultaneously, distorted by the communications circuitry in his helmet, came Uhura’s frantic yell. He ignored the advancing Dalek and ducked under the door into the other laboratory.

Blinded for a moment in the sudden glare of the other room, he paused for several precious seconds, blinking his eyes to accustom them to the brightness of the lighting, before he saw the cause of Uhura’s alarm.

Three Daleks, one red, the other two black and orange, were gliding threateningly towards the humans. Uhura, suited and carrying Spock’s suit and tricorder, watched with revulsion as the devices slid forward.

Red Dalek spoke, its turret lights punctuating each word.

STOP. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. COMMAND FOUR TO CONTROL. NON COORDINATED HUMANS IN LEVEL TWO LABORATORY SECTION. REQUEST COMMAND ONE DECISION.

Kirk took a pace past Uhura. “I asked you to get a fix on Mr Spock, Lieutenant. I’ll take care of these over-inflated wind-up toys. I’ve had about as much of them as I can stand.” He strode forward. Uhura, a worried frown on her face, tore her gaze from the back of his suit and concentrated on the tricorder, thankful for something to occupy her thoughts.

The turret of the red Dalek swung towards him, the weapons tick sweeping round to the centre of his chest.

STOP. YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO MOVE.

He took another pace forward.

STOP OR I FIRE.

The other two weapon sticks rotated in their sockets towards him. Carefully, deliberately, he took a final step. There was a sudden hissing of released gas and a plume of white vapour streamed from the snout of the red Dalek’s weapon stick. Swathed in a halo of vapour, Kirk was blinded for a moment – until the murderous flash of a high tension arc connected him with the machine. A tell-tale alarm sounded in his helmet, and he felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck.

The blast of vapour died as the charge spent itself on him. He touched his chest as the cloud of white vapour dispersed. His fingers came away coated with a white frost that, even as he watched it, evaporated into the air.

“Captain …what?” Uhura’s surprised voice sounded in his earphones. “What happened?”

“A few thousand volts of static electricity – carried on a stream of carbon dioxide.” He pointed an accusing finger at the apparently bewildered Dalek. “And useless against a thermally and electrically insulated E.V.A.suit.”

ALL UNITS NARROW FIELD. FIRE!

Again the white clouds, followed by the withering discharge of power. In a neatly executed move, Kirk rolled out of the path of the beams, lowering the flash visor as he did so. Despite his boast, the suit was unlikely capable of withstanding such punishment for long, and the warning alarm was beginning to grow insistent.  
The streams of gas cleared. Before the machine could re-aim, Kirk had flung himself at the red Dalek, pulling it round against its traction units.

ALL UNITS ALL UNITS. TO ME. TO ME. EMERGENCY. ALL UNITS EMERGENCY EMERG…

With muscle cracking effort, he launched the Dalek across the floor and into a bank of electrical gear. There was a golden spray of sparks as the machine crushed the cover plate, forcing the wiring together in a multitude of short-circuiting connections.

Kirk was too busy to see this, concentrating on avoiding the wreaths of fire from the two surviving Daleks. A beam of energy lanced off his faceplate, scoring the surface and blinding him in the flash of the arc. Shaking the blindness from his eyes, he stumbled into one of the machines, gloved fingers clawing for a grip on the slippery plastic of the casing. One hand closed on an eyestick, and he wrenched it around, feeling machinery tear and ruin as he did so. The casing accelerated into him as he fought to pull it off its precious contact with the ground. He was hammered back against a bank of machinery, battering the already damaged backpack and all but tearing his tortuous grip from the machine. Boots skidding on the floor, he began to turn the Dalek, swinging its wildly firing gunstick to aim at the other robot.

Weapons sticks flaring, both machines swept each other with fire as he desperately twisted out of the beams. The two casing exploded in a welter of pyrotechnics, showering his prone body with burning wreckage.

He rolled uncertainly onto his side, staring past the dancing coloured lights at the flaming hulks that were once Daleks. Uhura knelt beside him and helped him to his feet. More fires were breaking out all around them as machinery damaged by the explosions began to fail.

Nodding that he was still in one piece, he motioned to the outer door, taking the last spare suit from her as he did so.

As they left the scene of destruction he gave a deep and exaggerated sigh. “Any sign of Spock, Lieutentant?”

“Very faint. Left along the corridor and down, perhaps one level.”

“Good. Are you alright?”

She gave him a curious glance, peering at him through the arc blackened visor of his helmet, “I think I’ll live, Captain.”

His face cracked into an ironic smile as he studied the visor from the inside. “Well, now we know how well they do on the job of making these things. One up to the technicians.”

They strode side by side along the corridor, Kirk’s every sense keyed to the nth degree for more Daleks. He wished for a phaser. He had already risked the suit’s circuitry, and he was unsure of its capacity for absorbing – without damage – another charge. Uhura’s insistent call jerked him back to the job in hand.

“Stronger Vulcan body function readings. To our right and down.”

He slowed and, lifting the flash visor, concentrated on the wall beside him. He stopped before a door, and turned a questioning face towards her. He saw her nod behind the plexiglass of her helmet.

Another door, another coloured strip. Black this time, edged with thin lines of gold. He reached for the control. Before he could touch it, the panel growled upwards. He drew his hand back, balling it into a fist. He paused …

Two instincts fought within him. One for caution, the other to rush to the aid of his first officer.

The latter won through and he stepped through into the dimly lit and narrow corridor beyond.

“See if you can jam the door with something from the equipment pack, Lieutenant. I’ve been caught by these doors before.” He touched a control on his chestpack and his helmet flooded with the warm glow of a red night vision light. He blinked as his eyes accustomed to the gloom.

“Captain, I …” 

He turned at her voice. The coring tool from the soil samples kit hung from her backpack that she was trying to jam into the door slideway appeared to be possessed of a life of its own. “Some kind of electromagnetic …”

He raced across to help her. As he touched the core tool, the corridor exploded in a whirling tornado of electric arcs. Instinct triumphing over the knowledge that his suit would protect him pulled him away from the door, dragging Uhura with him.

The arcing died as abruptly as it stared. He leapt for the door, fingers sliding across its smooth surface as it dropped with a fatal thump to the floor below.

“So much for leaving a clear line of retreat,” he muttered bitterly, his lips set in a thin, hard smile. He spun about and walked swiftly along the corridor, Uhura at his side. The trip was short. The corridor ended in yet another door. There were no other exits.

In the claustrophobic gloom, Kirk felt around the the frame for an operating switch. Finding none, he was about to turn back to Uhura, a ‘what do we do now’ expression on his face, when, with almost theatrical slowness, the door ground upwards.

Kirk stepped through onto a wide, unfenced catwalk. The place appeared to be some kind of control room, lined with impressively efficient looking banks of instruments, coloured lights winking all round them, the sounds of computers and lesser machines conversing with each other filling the air.

He looked down on the black floor below, his heart leaping as he recognised the haggard figure sitting hunched on the low platform in the center of the room.

“Spock!”

The figure lifted its head. Tired eyes looked up from a drawn face.

“Captain? You are all right?” The voice wavered slightly, yet it was still Spock. Kirk looked about the room for a way down. He spotted a shallow metal ramp on the opposite side of the chamber and turned to make towards it.

“Spock, what happened?”

The Enterprise’s first officer rose stiffly. “The Dalek method of extracting information is … “ He paused for a moment, as if searching for the most apt method of description. Kirk finished for him.

“Interesting, Mr Spock?” The Vulcan nodded, his old, thoughtfully neutral expression returning.

“Perhaps, Captain. However, I would describe the process more accurately as …”

Kirk suddenly found his way blocked by a black and orange Dalek.

STAY WHERE YOU ARE.

Doors began opening all round the chamber, disgorging Daleks from all sides. He came to an abrupt stop, suddenly conscious of a subtle difference in these Daleks to similar ones met before. Each had, in place pf the sucker at the end of the right telescope arm, a wickedly efficient looking three fingered metal claw.

Bu the object that really caught his attention, grasped tightly in each claw and aimed squarely at the center of his chest, was a Starfleet issue phaser.


	6. Chapter 6

Kirk’s eyes darted about the room, seeking out the command Dalek. He stepped towards the edge of the catwalk, mentally measuring the intervening distance between himself and the nearest of the phaser carrying black Daleks.

STOP. STAY WHERE YOU ARE.

His head turned towards the sound picked up by the little stereophonic microphone array either side of his helmet. Almost at once he saw the command Dalek, a semi-gloss sheen of pure gold covering its casing. It glided to the top of the ramp across the chamber, swinging its eyestick towards him.

A MEANS OF ESCAPE HAD BEEN PROVIDED. WHY THEREFORE DID YOU CHOOSE TO ATTEMPT TO REGAIN POSSESSION OF THESE EXPENDABLE UNITS?

Kirk frowned, wondering at the expression ‘expendable units.’ He glanced at Spock, understanding flooding to him.

“You mean these two members of my crew?”

CORRECT. THE EXPENDABLE UNITS.

“They are not expendable. They …” Irritatingly impassive, the Dalek interrupted.

THEY ARE MEMBERS OF THE OPERATING PERSONNEL OF THE CRAFT ORBITING THIS PLANETARY BODY?

“Yes.”

THE VESSEL WILL OPERATE WITHOUT THEIR PRESENCE.

Kirk frowned, beginning to see what the Dalek was getting at. 

THEREFORE THE UNITS ARE EXPENDABLE. YOU RISKED YOUR EXISITENCE BY ATTEMPTING TO REGAIN THE UNITS. THEREFORE YOUR ACTIONS ARE UNCOORDINATED AND ILLOGICAL. THEREFORE YOU ARE ILLOGICAL. THEREFORE YOUR RACE IS AN INFERIOR SPECIES. THEREFORE YOUR UNITS ARE NO LONGER OF USE TO THE FURTHERANCE OF DALEK TECHNOLOGY.

The gold turret rotated slowly towards a scarlet Dalek.

SUB COMMANDER. REMOVE AND ELIMINATE THESE CREATURES. INSTRUCT SECURITY TO DEAL WITH THE SMALL CRAFT IN GREEN STORAGE AREA FOUR …

The Daleks either side of Kirk began to glide forward menacingly. Kirk took another pace nearer the edge of the catwalk, at the same time manoeuvring nearer to the black Dalek beside him. Playing for time, he spoke:

“Wait, Dalek. It is my turn to speak.” Every robot in the chamber froze, as if confronted by something so unusual as to be beyond the scope of their experience – so much so that they were unsure of what course of action to take. Gold Dalek’s eyestick settled onto his faceplate once more.

“You have imprisoned us. Made use of us and our devices. Now you are ready to discard us like so much rubbish. Is it not a wasteful procedure for a race that prides itself on logic and efficiency? Number one Commandment of the Cosmos, Dalek: Thou shalt not waste.”

There was a significant pause.

WE HAVE GAINED FROM YOU AND YOUR DEVICES ALL USEFUL INFORMATION THEY CONTAIN. IT IS ILLOGICAL TO PRESERVE THAT WHICH MAKES NO FURTHER CONTRIBUTION TO OUR SCIENCE OR TECHNOLOGY.

“Again the word illogical.” Another step forward, another few precious centimetres nearer the black Dalek. “You claim to be such a perfect race, but does a perfect race make so many errors? So many flaws of judgement? Count them, Dalek. My planned escape and my real escape. An error of timing? Or an error of logic? I destroyed one of your efficient security guards. I freed one of my crew. I destroyed even more security guards. I can survive your weapons.” Another step, emphasising his argument. “Error. Error. Error. All on your part, all within a few hours of each other.” He pointed an accusing finger at the gold Dalek. “In your own words you claim to be a totally logical race. I accuse you of living a lie, of being the very flawed civilisation you pretend to despise.”

In the echoing silence that followed, the golden eyestick slowly scanned the room. Finally the device spoke.

ERRORS CEASE TO BE OF CONSEQUENCE WHEN CORRECTED. YOU ARE ONCE MORE OUR PRISONERS, THEREFORE THE ERRORS INCURRED BY THE DALEK COMPLEX ARE NULLIFIED. THEREFORE ALL ERRORS ARE ELIMINATED AS IF THEY HAD NEVER EXISTED. THEREFORE THE ERRORS NEVER OCCURRED. WE ARE STILL THE FLAWLESS RACE OUR CREDO DECREES. YOUR ATTEMPTS AT THE USE OF LOGIC IS INTERESTING, THE ARGUMENT HOWEVER IS FLAWED.

“They are right, Captain.” Spock’s grave voice sounded from the floor below. “They are a sophisticated race, founded on a sophisticated logic. I commend you on your effort, however be comforted in the knowledge that my own efforts met with the same results.”

CREATURES WHO LIVE BY ILLOGIC SHOULD NEVER ATTEMPT TO USE LOGIC AS A WEAPON. THIS AUDIENCE IS TERMINATED. REMOVE AND DISPOSE OF THEM …

“Very well, then.” Kirk readied his body for action, willing the adrenaline to flow, calling on the last emotional reserves he possessed to aid him in the combat he knew he must survive. “If a logical creature can’t better you, let’s see what an illogical creature can do. Spock! Catch!”

So saying, he heaved the environmental suit pack towards his first officer, using its increase in momentum as a fulcrum to launch himself sideways at the black Dalek. His shoulder connected hard with the centre of the machine, and with a horrible metallic groaning noise it skidded out of control off the edge of the catwalk, landing on the unyielding floor below with a satisfying crash of machinery. Clutching for the phaser in his eagerness to save it, Kirk almost followed the machine in its death fall, jinking in mid-air and rolling across the lip of the catwalk. Powering to his feet, he dodged an empty claw and reached for the weapon stick. Wrenching upwards, the machine teetered for a moment, then went over on its side in a shower of sparks. He spun on his heel, to see Uhura, recovered from the abruptness and fury of his attack, swing the alloy tube from her experiment pack into the vulnerable eyestick of a red Dalek. The lens assembly disintegrated in a cloud of glass fragments, the machine frantically backing away from her. Blinded and disorientated, the machine rolled backwards over the lip of the cat walk to join its ruined colleagues below.

Kirk found the time to shoot an appreciative nod in her direction, and turned in search of new victims. It was not to be so. Sitting well out of reach, phasers levelled solidly on the Federation personnel, a pair of Daleks waited dispassionately. Out of the corner of his visor, Kirk saw two more scurrying around the other side of the catwalk. Below him, Spock, suit on but helmet lying at his feet, was surrounded by three Daleks. One carried the sixth and final phaser. Gold Dalek spoke:

A FUTILE AND UNPRODUCTIVE DISPLAY OF EMOTION. IT WAS YOUR LAST, HUMAN. TAKE THEM … UUURRRGGGHHH!

A hole filled with flashing lights had appeared in the top section of the Dalek near the join between the main casing and the turret. More remarkable than the presence of a mere hole was the object protruding from it – one of the shining chromed Dalek spanners.

Disorientated by their leader’s somewhat abrupt demise, the other Daleks were stunned into immobility for a fraction of a moment. Kirk used that time to its fullest. In a low, hard dive, he bridged the gap between himself and the two Daleks, slamming into them.

One slid off the catwalk, its traction motors dead, the other collapsed against a bank of relays in the wall beside it. In the machine’s death throes, the phaser went off, the main blast tearing into the wire trunking in the ceiling above them. But the edge of the secondary corona of the beam caught Kirk’s right shoulder as he vainly tried to roll free of the exploding wreckage.

Fire lanced through his nervous system. Blinking the pain from his eyes, he forced himself to his feet, reaching for the flaming mass of twisted metal and plastic, fist closing onto the phaser to tear it from the frozen, triple clawed grip. He turned, phaser nestling comfortingly in his right hand, to see where Spock, helmet on but visor open, had also gained a phaser, and was using it to good effect on a trio of Daleks at the base of the ramp. But for those burning and inert machines lying on their sides, the chamber was empty of Daleks. Fires had started all over the place, and charring insulation was beginning to fall from the ceiling.

“Phew! What happened, Spock?”

“It appears we have an ally, Captain.” Spock’s gloved finger pointed. Following his gaze, Kirk saw a new environment suit, Dalek spanner cradled in the crook of its right arm, standing over a turretless black Dalek.

“Hansa? I thought I told you to stay with the shuttlecraft.”

“He did, Jim.”

“Bones? You were ordered to …”

“Court martial me when we get back to the ship, Jim, but in the meantime I would suggest that we get out of here.”

Kirk winced as a control panel less than a metre away to his left exploded, strewing the catwalk with burning wreckage. He pointed to the doorway, skirting a flaming Dalek to join the rest of his crew.

“This way, back to the shuttle before they reorganise.” He led the way, phaser held ready for immediate use. McCoy was beside him as they reached the doorway to the main corridor.

“How did you find us?”

A sardonic smile spread across the physician’s face, one eyebrow lifting on his forehead. “Followed the trail of wreckage, Jim,” was the laconic reply. “Of course,” he tapped the black box clipped to the side of his chestpack, “I did have a little help from my tricorder.”

Kirk shook his head sadly. “This is the price you pay for having too loyal a crew.” Explosions shook the floor.

“What in space is going on?”

“Looks like we did more damage than we thought, Bones.” The rumble of more explosions came over the audio circuits.

Spock caught up with them. “A manifestation of a civilisation so dependent on machinery as to have evolved such efficient machines as to eliminate the need for safety devices.”

“You mean damage the system enough and the whole thing breaks down?”

“Correct. The failure of one machine causes damage to another, which in turn damages more machines, which fail, and damage other machines …”

“Chain reaction with a vengeance.” Kirk peered along the corridor. “In which case I suggest we get out of here before the whole shooting match blows sky high.”

“An admirable decision, Captain.”

They reached an intersection. Kirk motioned the others to wait as he approached the corner. He leaned his head and shoulders cautiously around the frame, then drew it back sharply as a bolt of energy careened from the wall bare centimetres from his faceplate. He faced the others.”

“It looks as if there’s a welcoming committee out there. At least a dozen, maybe more.” He raised the phaser to his battered faceplate, turning a control and examining the power gauge status. “How are the other phasers for power?”

“About a quarter, Jim.” McCoy snapped a switch closed on his phaser, then turned to Spock for his verdict.

“I read sixty two point seven percent energy reserves, Captain.”

Kirk nodded. “Not much, but it’ll have to do. Watch our rear, Bones. Spock, give me covering fire until I can get across the intersection. Two arcs of fire are better than one.”

A frown clouded the Vulcan’s sombre face. “Captain, may I point out that your suit has already been subjected to high energy overloads, and that the critical systems …”

“Point noted, Spock, but I’m still giving orders around here.” He shot a significant glance in the direction of his medical officer, then, waiting for Spock to position himself against the panel frame, phaser raised to his chestpack ready for immediate use, he stepped as near to the intersection as the cover afforded by the angle in the wall would allow.

“Captain, I …” Spock’s voice, unemotional as ever, gave the lie to the thoughts Kirk knew to be running through his mind.

“All right, Spock. I think I know what I’m doing.”

“Remember the Alamo, Spock.” McCoy’s strained voice sounded in their helmet speakers.

“’Alamo,’ Doctor?” Spock’s frown modified to an expression of puzzlement. He looked sideways at McCoy through narrowing eyes. “Would you care to clarify you reason in calling to mind such a structure?” Understanding suddenly flooded his features. “Ah! I presume you are reffering to the event termed in your history as ‘The Battle of the Alamo.’ But, correct me if my history is at fault, Doctor, was not the Texan garrison, to which I presume you equate our situation, defeated by the superior Mexican forces?”

“Damnit, Spock! It’s the spirit that counts!”

“Evidently, Doctor. Ready, Captain?”

Kirk smiled grimly at his friends and fellow officers. “Ready as I’ll ever be, Spock. Go!”

So saying he launched himself across the narrow corridor. Spock swung around the narrow doorframe, phaser levelled, his finger already squeezing the trigger control. Kirk flattened against the frame in the opposite wall, any moment expecting the whirlwinds of raw energy to bite into his damaged suit.

He began to twist around, bringing his phaser to bear. It was only then he realised that Spock’s phaser had not fired. He stepped out from the meagre refuge into the center of the corridor. In both directions it was empty, as echoing as a tomb.

Spock was at his side. “Most interesting. It would appear that the Daleks are no longer interested in our elimination.”

“I wouldn’t count on that. Not after the damage we’ve caused.” Kirk started along the corridor. “What is more likely is that they are regrouping somewhere. But, as the coast is clear, we might as well get as close as we can to the shuttle.”

They walked in silence for several minutes. After the elation of combat Kirk began to feel the previously unnoticed numbing ache of his injured shoulder. He placed the phaser into his other hand to move the shocked arm inside the suit, exercising the stiffened muscle back to as near normal as the damage would allow.

The Enterprise group passed the ruined lab. Smoke was curling ominously from the black cavern across the room. Flickering red and yellow lights shone from within, and the thermocouples in the suits registered an alarming temperature rise. A grim smile of satisfaction spread across Kirk’s face. The feeling of triumph was short lived. Kirk stopped dead as he felt the almost imperceptible vibration through the floor. He spun about, it time to see a silver panel drop to the floor, sealing the corridor behind them. He turned again in the direction they were going, suddenly breaking into a steady, loping jog trot. “This way. Hurry. They’ll try to seal us in.”

He skidded to a halt at an intersection, waiting for the others to catch up. Action dismissing the pain in his shoulder, he was thinking quickly now.

“Keep going.” He pointed along the corridor. “A few hundred metres. Green stripe on a large door to the right, if it’s not jammed open. Cut through with the phaser if it isn’t/”

He glanced along the left arm of the corridor. Spock stopped before him as McCoy and Uhura caught up.

“Give me your phaser, Spock. Take McCoy’s.”

“What do you intend to do, Captain?”

“They used some sort of electromagnetic field on the shuttle as we landed. I aim to see they don’t use it again as you take off.”

“As we try to take off?” growled McCoy. “And what will you be doing in the meantime? Admiring the architecture?”

Kirk left the question unanswered. Instead, he turned to Spock, punching switches on the chronometer board of his chestpack. A series of digits glowed greenly from a small panel inside his helmet. “You’ve got ten minutes. If at the end of that time I’m not in the chamber holding the shuttlecraft you get that ship out of there, with all of you aboard, and get them back to the Enterprise. Clear?”

The neutral face nodded. “Quite, Captain.”

“And keep McCoy with you. Knock him out, tie him up or anaesthetise him, but keep him on board that shuttle.” He backed down the corridor behind him. “You have nine and a half minutes, Mr Spock.”

Spock nodded, then strode abruptly down the corridor. McCoy’s mouth opened as if to say something, then thought better of it. An agonised expression in his face, the Doctor followed the other two along the corridor.

Kirk checked both phasers as he walked. Ominous smells of overheated circuitry began to drift into the helmet, carried by the air conditioning system. Systems were beginning to fail already, but the perspiration that beaded his forehead was due to more than the mere failures of the suit coolers. Gradually he began to recognise the subtle changes appearing on the wall decoration.

Abruptly the corridor opened out into a large anti-chamber. Dominating the room was a massive, powerfully built door frame from his entrance. Standing his side of it, their backs to him, were two Daleks, apparently engaged in conversation. The great door was open.

His footsteps sounded hollowly on the metal floor, echoing back from the cold hardness of the walls. Two turrets swung towards him. One, a blue Dalek, frantically began to rotate, aiming the weapon stick. Coldly, unemotionally, Kirk levelled his phaser and squeezed a single, short burst. A halo of blue-green flame appeared around the machine and it was still.

The other had almost reached the door when it began calling a warning to the others in its urgent, metallic whine.

EMERGENCY. HUMAN IN CONROL SECTION. SEAL CONTROL ROOM DOOR. SEA…

Kirk’s phaser spoke, silencing the Dalek as easily as if the trigger had been an ‘off’ switch. But the warning had been enough. Motors hummed, and the massive portal began to inch down. He sprinted towards the still coasting Dalek and, muscles complaining with the effort, pushed it under the lowering panel. Praying that the robots were stronger than the door motors, he backed away, phaser aimed under the gap as the bottom of the door dropped towards the casing.

The door panel struck the casing with a hollow groan. There was an ominous groan of straining metal, and the turret and upper section began to crumple. The door slowed, yet continued to roll inexorably down.

Suddenly there was a popping, snapping sound, followed by the tormented while of an unloaded motor tearing its bearing apart. The door stopped moving.

Kirk ducked under the ruined panel, phaser held before him. Yes, it was the control room as he remembered it on his first confrontation with the Daleks. About a dozen of the creatures, painted a variety of colours, tended the machines. All, apparently, pointedly ignoring him.

He strode carefully towards the dais in the centre of the room. The chronometer inside his helmet read six minutes twenty five seconds.

A viewscreen flickered into life high on the wall before him. An image of the shuttle swum into sharp focus. Stepping into shot were the suited figures of Spock, McCoy, and Uhura. He tore his eyes from the screen, glancing about him for anything that looked remotely like a fire control for the electromagnetic field. He heft the phaser, flicking the external speakers of his suit to full.

“Back off from the controls, or I start firing.”

STOP. THEY WILL NOT OBEY YOUR ORDERS.

As the command died in the echoing chamber, platforms hummed upwards out of the impenetrable blackness of the floor. Each bore a Dalek, gunsticks aimed unwaveringly at him. The centre platform, lifting a metre from the floor, bore another gold Dalek.

“They soon replace their rulers here,” Kirk noted drily.

ONE OF MY SUBORDINATES WAS DESTROYED. A REPLACEMENT HAS ALREADY BEEN PROGRAMMED.

Four minutes. Kirk lifted the phaser, aiming at the centre of the gold Dalek. Gunsticks locked unerringly on it. Unmoved, the golden machine spoke:

DROP THE WEAPON. IT IS FITTING THAT YOUR LAST ACT BEFORE ELIMINATION IS TO WITNESS THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR SUBORDINATE UNITS.

“Not if I can help it, Dalek.” He spat the words, suddenly lobbing the phaser in an overarm throw towards the commander. Several gunsticks flared, the phaser incandescing in a corona of energy.

DESTROY THE HUMAN.

The last order was almost a scream. The gunsticks flared again, but at an empty column of air. Kirk ran, judo rolling as a beam of energy hissed through the air above him. He came upright, his second phaser spitting fire. A black Dalek vibrated in an aura of light, then winked out, its eyestick and sucker stick swinging down to point uselessly at the floor.

Three minutes fifteen seconds. He ran before a bank of instruments, spraying with fire any machine foolish enough to get in his way. Turning, he faced a pair of Daleks, unsure whether or not to fire should they damage any of the precious control panels. Gold Dalek’s voice boomed again.

OPERATOR DALEKS, DESTROY THE HUMAN. PROTECT CONTROL SYSTEMS.

Kirk dodged a wild lunge from a murderous looking steel claw. He grabbed the claw as it shot past his shoulder and began to swing the Dalek around him, balancing the centrifugal force it generated as it revolved. Without warning, he released it, letting it glide out of control across the ebony floor to collide with one of the black Daleks frantically manoeuvring out of its murderous path. The two met in a shower of sparks and burning alloy. He shouldered another operator into a control panel as energy arced all round him. Smoke began to drift across the chamber as other panels burst into flames.

A massive electric shock pulsed through his body, collapsing him to his knees. His phaser flared, and his would-be assassin was torn apart as the phaser beam ripped through its casing. Still crouching, he saw through the drifting smoke the all-powerful gold machine, lights in is turret blazing redly as it called orders to its surviving robots.

ALL DALEKS. ALL DALEKS. DESTROY THE HUMANS DESTROY THE HUMANS DESTROY DESTROY DESTRO…

With a titanic effort, Kirk gripped the phaser with both hands, lifting it towards the gold image swimming in his vision. The muzzle glowed with hellfire and a beam of pure energy lanced into the robot. The casing glowed under the onslaught, chips of material glowing briefly before they were reduced to component ions. He was still holding the weapon with a rigor-mortis like grip as the beam flickered weakly, then died.

The gold eyestick swung down at him.

PRIMITIVE. COMMAND DALEKS ARE MORE THAN A MATCH FOR YOUR PUNY WEAPON.

Shocked, he could only stare at the inert phaser.

DESTROY THIS CREATURE BEFORE IT CAN CAUSE MORE DAMAGE.

Freed from his stunned stupor, Kirk watched in horror as five black Daleks began to close on him for a minimum range shot that would ensure no more machinery would be risked. He glanced at the chronometer. Ninety seconds. Too soon – he had promised Spock ten minutes. He raised himself to one knee, dropping the useless phaser to the decking. He turned to face the gold Dalek as the black Daleks paused, gun sticks swivelling towards him.

The chamber was suddenly rent by a massive concussion that threw Kirk head over heels across it. Yellow flame seared his suit, charring the already battered fabric. He shook the ringing from his ears, arms flailing for purchase to help him to his feet. He pushed some hot wreckage from his chestpack and sat up. Looking for all the world like a classical interpretation of Hades, the control room was a wreck, fires erupting from machinery and explosions shaking the floor.

One minute. He glanced about for Daleks. All he could see were torn hulks. Insulation and framework began to shatter down from the ravaged ceiling. Dodging round a burning casing, he ducked under the door.

His heart froze as he saw the Dalek, gunstick poised to blast a beam of fire through his chest.

For one eternal moment he stood awaiting the impact. Suddenly it dawned upon him that the Dalke would not fire, not now or ever again. It was the first Dalek he had silenced entering the control complex.

He dodged round it. Forty seconds. He wasn’t going to make it to the shuttlecraft. He started a frantic run along the sterile corridors to the sound of exploding machinery.

His breath catching in his throat, he stumbled to the intersection where he had parted from the rest of the crew. He rounded the corner, leaning on the frame for support, only yo come face to eyestick with a black and orange Dalek. The gunstick pivoted up to his faceplate, the robot intoning in a zombie like voice.

DESTROY HUMAN. DESTROY DESTROY DE …

Kirk clenched both fists together and slammed them down on the gunstick. It went off, gouging chips of gold from the floor. Swinging his fists around and across, he hammered the side of the eyestick, spinning it and the turret round and smashing the lens assembly against the wall. He walked past the blinded robot, the chronometer showing a mere twenty seconds.

He could hear the rhythmic pulse of the shuttlecraft’s impulse engines warming to full power, the tiny turbo-pumps squeezing into the ever thirsty reaction chambers. Ten seconds. He could see the gap in the wall leading to the chamber.

And beyond it a group of warrior Daleks.

Eight seconds. A bolt of fire lanced past, murderously close.

Seven. He started a low, crouching run, aiming at the door.

Six. A chunk of framework vapourised beside him as he rolled over frantically dodging the streams of electricity.

Three seconds. He crashed against the wall opposite the doorway as a shot ricocheted from his chestpack. The chronometer counted to zero, and winked out as the power units failed.

He pushed himself across the corridor, the enticing white shape of the shuttle beckoning him.

“Get that ship out of here, Spock. Get it ou…”

There was the kick of a mule as his backpack exploded, struck by a Dalek beam of energy. The blowers in his helmet started filling it with acrid fumes as the impact threw him face down in the chamber. Chocking on the smell of charring insulation, he dragged himself to his knees, pain burning through his entire nervous system. In his mind’s eye he saw the Daleks, weapon stick flaring, outlined against the mellow glow of the chamber wall.

A black hexagon appeared against the snow white of the hull. A silver, vaguely humanoid shape detached itself from the blurring shadows, walking towards him. Strong, firm hands dragged him, half carried him towards the shuttle.

A ball of light burst against the flat hull of the shuttle as he was pulled unceremoniously through the access port. The golden glow winked out as the triple door slid shut behind him, to be replaced by the comfortingly familiar red glow of the night vision lamps above the main console.

Frantically eager fingers broke the neck seals of his suit, and he emerged, red-eyed, chocking and coughing, inhaling greedily of the cool, odourless, bottled air of the shuttle cabin. Vibrations juddered through the decking as he was lowered into a seat. These were no longer from the exploding Dalek machinery, but from the impulse engines in the pds beside them.

He released his backpack as McCoy removed the glove from his left hand and pumped a concoction of drugs into his circulatory system  
He ran a weary hand across his smoke and sweat grimed forehead.

“By the red dragons of Tantalus, Spock, I thought I told you to get the ship out of here in ten minutes, whether I was on board or not. My chronometer counted out before I even entered the chamber.”

Spock handed his helmet to Uhura as Hansa relinquished the pilot’s seat to him. His face was a picture of innocence as he looked into Kirk’s bloodshot eyes.

“Most interesting, Captain. It appears that I overestimated the time elapsed. Perhaps a manifestation of the interrogation I was given by the Daleks. It appears to have affected me more than I first realised.”

Kirk look about him in mock dismay. “Doesn’t anyone around here take orders anymore?” He stood, waving away McCoy’s protesting comments, and dropped heavily into the co-pilot’s seat. “Okay, Spock. Close collision screens. Let’s get out of here.” 

He buckled his shock straps as the muffled roar of the impulse drive rose in intensity and pitch. The main thrust venting downward lifted the shuttle from the golden floor, tearing chunks of glowing metal from it and searing the surviving Daleks to hulks in the hurricane of the downwash.

Vents closed and opened, re-channelled the power to push the shuttle forward. Accelerating fiercely across the short gap between it and the wall, Magellan struck the yielding metal squarely, all her impetus behind the impact. Tortured metal screamed as a ragged tear danced across it. Welded seams gave way, and large plates curled away like so much paper as the ship bored through them.

Magellan shuddered for a moment, then, engines roaring defiantly, arced smoothly out over the barren red wasteland. Kirk heaved a sigh of relief as Spock eased the throttle quadrant, sparing the power plants. Kirk twisted in his seat to contemplate the others. McCoy spoke.

“What I would call a close one, Jim.” Kirk followed his gaze down to the instrument pack. Torn and burned metal shards were all that remained of his air-recycling unit. He gave a rueful smile.

“Yes. I was wondering why I suddenly started to breathe smoke, instead …”

“Captain.” Spock’s level voice dragged him back to the matter in hand. “Stern video camera. Disturbance on the surface.”

He touched a control, and the viewing screen in the grey globe before him glowed into life. ‘Disturbance’ underestimated the fact somewhat, for the whole of the pyramid shaped hill was being torn by violent explosions and a frenzy of flying flame. The scene was bathed in a lurid red glow as the Dalek city burned.

“Get this on tape, Spock. What an incredible sight.”

“Agreed, Captain. However I appear to experiencing difficulties …”

The shuttle bucked as if grabbed by a giant’s clumsy hand. Slewing round, Kirk sensed Spock’s losing control over the ship. Warning klaxons began to sound, and red overload lights winked angrily from the status board. Willing the last ounce of energy from the protesting power units, Spock waltzed the shuttle drunkenly across the sky. Red dust filled the viewscreens, slashed here and there by raw lightning.

“My god,” muttered Kirk. “The planet’s breaking up.” He stared, fascinated. At the viewscreens as the shuttle fought for space in the turmoil of air currents with boulders twice her size.

Engines screaming, the rugged little ship peeled itself from the raging maelstrom as it left the atmosphere. Battered instrumentation began to settle down to normal levels, as still more began to register the comforting calm of the cold hard vacuum of space.

“I have Enterprise’s carrier signals, Captain.” Uhura’s voice was music to his ears.

“Open a channel, Lieutenant.” She nodded to him. “Kirk to Enterprise, this is shuttlecraft Magellan to Enterprise. Come in, Enterprise.”

Scotty’s relieved voice hissed over the shuttle’s speakers. “Good to hear you again, Captain.”

“The feeling, like they say, is mutual, Scotty. Have you an accurate fix on the shuttlecraft?”

“We’re having difficulty holding your carrier signal as it is, Captain. Something is disturbing sensor carriers for parsecs around. Whatever it is, it’s powerful.”

Kirk nodded to himself, the image of the dying city still etched in his mind. Abruptly, he spoke. “Stand by to receive incoming shuttle, Mr Scott. Kirk out.”

He stared at the silent speaker for a few seconds.

“Something bothering you, Jim?”

“Uh? Oh, no, Bones. I’m just wondering how long it’ll be before the human race evolves as far as the Dalek’s had advanced.”

McCoy snorted. “Well, if that’s ‘advanced’ hooray for the good old Stone Age, that’s what I say.”

Spock leaned from the control panel. “Quite, Doctor. No doubt such and era would be concordant with your accomplishments as a man of medicine …”

Kirk’s smile was a happy one. At least things appeared to be quickly returning to normal. He tapped the control panel in front of him. “Course laid in for the approach of the Enterprise, Spock. We’re on our way home.”

* * *

Beneath the surface of an unidentified and uncharted ball of rock somewhere below them, something moved amid a heap of smouldering rubble. A machine, its golden skin scarred and pitted, grated unsteadily across an uneven floor. The eyestick surveyed the carnage, watching as fragments of plastic and metal pattered to the ground from the torn panelling above. It spoke, twin lamps in its upper turret flaring brightly in the slowly drifting haze.

COMMAND TO ALL SURVIVING UNITS. REPAIR AND REBUILD. ELIMINATE ALL ERRORS. REPLACE AND IMPROVE. WE WILL SURVIVE. WE ARE SUPERIOR.

WE ARE THE DALEKS.


End file.
